TWENTY-FOUR

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ORKIDEH

b. 1963?

When one is dead it’s for a very long time,

sure, but you found the loophole,

suspended yourself in dying,

wearing dying like a child wears a white sheet

to seem a ghost, but why would any ghost

look like that and who are you trying to convince?

Art? What is beautiful is not always beautiful

in company: Prussian blue, men like me—

of course there’s weather under the seeds,

the doomsday clock blinking in 8’s which look like

mountains in Farsi, no euphemism for that hateful light

or the crushing sameness of our species—

each person throbs like an idiot moon:

death is their job, dying is yours.

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—from BOOKOFMARTYRS.docx by Cyrus Shams