(Splendor & Misery, Face B, Track 2)
Violence makes good background noise
for anything. Even for knowledge.
People suffer for knowing all the time
in your stories—you know, the ones where
something shrouded in shadow stalks the
corridors between neon and dancing
with its eyes on everything gentle
and its tendrils on everything glimmering.
How dare you tell me this is somehow
unfathomable?
What is the block, child?
What is it if not the night
turning liminal, sliding into the dark upper sea
where we hold back knowing?
It batters the bones of things
that want to see beyond their horizon,
it is the storm that walls off the new edge of the world,
the barricade that blurs treasure or threat
outside your reach.
And yet you still wish to know.
To venture beyond fear’s camp.
To lose your mind in its gyre.
The corner will cry in its usual way,
cry copper and betrayal,
cry having faith in what you know,
but you will cross the threshold anyway.