the sun strips away the first layers of the day i hear mr coyne say, grinding off each layer to reveal more of the blue underneath (lurking and sulking under the black the red the orange the gold). lurking now under white in fragments blowing out of sky greyish, blayish.
these friends all nod silent on the way in and out, black inversions held to precision. our own castle guards for our nonarchny. they are cast from industry, reflect the city’s heritage, its current motif. getting by by getting by.
a problem in writing is that people always want the voice of a me, an I. but I don’t believe in I, only in a voice. this voice isn’t even I, it is only itself. it is cut off from person, it is cast out online. it is voice, it is words, it is sound, story. even as the 20th century destroyed the voice, people still want an it, an I, a me.
i follow a dentist’s way of brushing my teeth, i read about babbage and put ives in the car, i make a fake flag and move stickers from under a dictionary, talk on the phone too long, dial cell phones of forgotten agendas, put off emails and clean up bookmarks, put the garbage in the dumpster and walk from outside to inside to outside to inside to upstairs.
what sort of i is this, then? just another voice that eclipses meaning.