Don’t talk to it, I say!
Don’t talk to it!
If you talk to it, it will creep, it will slink
It does slither thin. A wooden horse
Rolling in

Stop looking!

Pretend those eyes
Have sunk away
Pretend that hand, reaching
Is nothing more than streaks of smoke

Bat it down!
Blow it out!

There is no good to come of this
There is no hoping for you here, so turn on heel
And walk away
For a thing that is not real can surely not follow you

—Hold,

wait a moment.

So

If I turn, and walk away,

you are saying I shall un-see what I have seen?

This mind is all I have
This mind is all that’s real
I bear one eye
It is the youngest

Even if all is smoke
How can I will out what is clear, for is that not

a trick of the brain as well? Ha! Don’t talk to it, you say!

But I declare, what choice have I?
Either way I am fooled
Either way I am misled
Either way I am in denial
Either way I fail all facets of this.

Dearest I,
I feel you have set me up to loose.

In a catalogue of ships
You list
The many able bodies
To be slain at Troy

You know I can not win
You know every hall I have
To turn to in this maze of doom
—Thouyou, Ego True
Such is a Penelope’s fate at the loom
All this will lead me to an end or biblical Armageddon.

You yourself said
There is no hoping for me here. You yourself

Dear-dearest self

Said nothing good can come of this

Don’t talk to it, I say!
Don’t talk to it!

I am going to talk to it, this figment

fragment

villain

of imagination.

I am going to talk to it, and I am going to ask:

Who are you?

Such a wait.
Such
A
Very
Long
Wait.

No trident god ever jagged so soft it comes, “I’m Nobody.”

That is what it replies
So, another end
I am lost at sea
But, there is no Ithaca for me, it seems.