BY ALEXANDER CROMER

they told me that I should write this down,
so here I am, writing shit down in that classic binary black.

but now that I sit here in front of this glaring screen of white
I’m at odds with what it was they wanted me to write.

maybe about a star that shines with eternal luster.
the one that shifts from silver mane to red dragon breath to blue serenity,
the one that finds me and you and everyone else whenever the sun falls to rest,
the one whose light travels, from the infinite brine of the cosmic miasma to the
glimmer of your third eye.
i used to look at that star and wonder if that’s where he keeps all the niggers
just like me, lost somewhere adjacent to emptiness.
if moths are the souls of us dead fools,
that star must be our home.
swing low, sweet chariot.

or, maybe about that high-pitched hum of a city breathing.
the metal wheels careening down metal tracks,
the meandering ghosts in black face shuffling themselves into the creaking
maw of a metal snake
(I’ve watch those ghosts for so long it feels like home to me),
the grey concrete like stacked cinder blocks peeking above
a haze lit aflame by the navy coolness of night,
the string of lights pulsating like cancer cells and kept on with nothing underneath them but the
legacy of Man.

or, maybe about the low roar of time as it stalks your viscera.
it feels like a jackhammer, rasping on the other side of your abdomen,
it sounds like white souls crashing against an ancient shore,
it smells like a bouquet of eternally rotting tulips,
it tastes like the ocean.

but now that I sit here behind this stern eye of electronic white,
I’m at odds with what it was,
they want me to.
so here I am,
writing shit as if it matters.