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Is This Is The End


by Jack Woods


In case of emergency, dial three digits and ask for the personal pronoun Help,
                tell them I (John) sent you,
                she will want to know what happened…
—Tell them the floor collapsed beneath your feet reaching for the stars
                 consumed by an Earth quaked in decision
Tell them he was on Greekfire attempting an experimental return to eternity
                punished by academic's into weapons-grade graduations
Tell them I forgot to maintain the casual relic of existence,
That it couldn't be helped, that time is everything we must sacrifice 
                to order future's past
Tell them you saw the whole thing, or I saw it or we witness lost translations 
                below the balcony's glass floor, one hundred stories over Tokyo
                with nothing but a coin to name
Tell them the terminal velocity of mind and surpass their mach 1 with
                your gentle speed of light, 
Blame the blank faces lining the quantum crosswalk for igniting Schrödinger's 
                last cigarette to cleanse geometry of our paperback woes,
Show them my body leaning Pisa, invisible on the eyes of a dead city
Hung in silent awe full of spectacle, sending messages incapable of language  
                beyond elastic metaphors equally lost and tried,
Tell them; you will release her if that's all they want, whom agree asking  
                for more to truly monopolise another's apocalypse,
Tell them please convince them crazy take less than selfless Lucifer's giving
                to satisfy a personal heartache,
Tell them it is immoral to trust one's hand to their shot of halo--a hit
                of socially acceptable heroin, preaches the better man
A better man to blame for the destruction of utopia, holding chaos hostage
                we watch shadow's illuminate Platonic cave turning mind and body
                against us, each jealous of their dimensions taken for granted,
Tell them those damned kids did it again,
Show them three or seven dissolve behind Old Man Trump to slide a single
                dollar in his pocket, whom in turn receive 50 lashes and forever
                probation, “you gotta earn your keep…”
Tell them the accident is the medium riding a fragile thread, connecting each
                 failed arrow to the roulette of reality,
Give them reason to doubt the alphabet painted soft in every memory, 
                devising rules of grammar to usurp our purpose,
“Tell them we have too much freedom—“ 
                yells the silhouette beneath your window as you
                turn and watch ununiformed officers slit his throat—bag, boot and 
                drive, all too quick in the wild of imagination,
Ask her what this all means, are we watched or beings watching?
                do we affect the passed?
Ask if I'm real, you're real, this page is real or simply locked to Physic's syntax
                communicating unseen between a conscious stardust of disorder,
Ask them if this phone call is merely another persuasion and art is nothing 
                more than coming to terms with what is on the other end;
Can help be our only end?


Epilogue

Remind them of the harmonics and hired symmetry tied to an imagined theme,
Tried first to the inconspicuous fabric of Brain Jones culture swooping grey 
                desserts for every final feed, while
The last supper stretches to begin history as we tell succeeding generations
                what it all means,
To tell to show to reveal the face and discard another bad apple into the
                eyes of Eden,
Tired of tomorrow, another perfect day,
Show them perfection is the inverse-square of time devoured in relative's 
                at the edge of infinity,
That we could be watching light on the back of our light-speed tortoise, 
                residing careful on every speed of light's turtle all the way down,
Tell them words are math counting forever four letters of truth,
Tell them we no longer see but to hear the broken voices of our brother's
               o' our sisters!
                           leak through the void; a something
Tell them the tragedy of the lie Lazarus waits to reveal,
That everything ends, but which end?
Tell them the here, and die one martyr short of mortality,
To leave me rest and avoid the words bringing me back from nowhere,
Tell them I lost the draft, and recreating manuscripts are the true war,
To recall a memory so fragile and thin, faint but patient for the idle
                observer to reconnect the last genetic's string we forget,
Ask them: if this were the last poem of our forgotten civilisation, 
                would these words be enough 
                                to create us?
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