Was it possible to prefer second acts, middle
Siblings, those in-between things actually
Arriving in between rather than announcing
Themselves in grand opening lines as being
In medias res? If not, it was also not possible
To prefer being alive to thinking about it.
Consider communication without language.
No stories, no questions, no opinions, no
Advice, no beginnings, no endings, no linear
Ellipses . . . No being human and no middles,
Middles being everything ever and always
But somehow nothing without punctuation.
Life was legion and death only individual,
The singular conclusion, so life overwhelmed
Death like an army led by atrocious generals
That conquered by sheer force of corpses,
The living scrambling over the heaps of dead
Until the next bunker of remorseless time
Was taken, time to take another. Time, be
Not proud, though some have sworn you
Were timeless as a dimension. Time, thou
Shalt change. And there we were, troops
In trenches again, after all that chaos. Well,
The middle is all of it and No Man's Land
As well. Self announced to mind in body
Thusly, I never felt entirely myself when
Talking or singing, least of all face to face,
Only when writing, when I knew I was most
Obscured and therefore closest to a truth.
It was in the midst of just such an assertion,
One so composed, of course, not spoken,
That I lifted up my face, my eyes, compound
Of thought and flesh and borrowed soul,
To see a shadowed pennant, a real one,
Flutter in the wind so that, from my tenuous
Perspective, the few amber street lamps of
This little village flickered SOS in semaphore.
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