Sound of a thousand floorboards creaking
in quick succession like cracking knuckles.
Fade in: a bathtub falling through a ceiling
that peels apart like orange rind. It all buckles:
a smile of false teeth that lingers like dust in the air,
the room in shadow now. Sublimation, suspense—
there’s precedent for all of this—a dirty prayer,
a golem in the dreamhouse. Impermanence
and me slumped against the ropes again. I’ve been
here before, though not like this: wouldn’t appear
onstage for another fifty years. History a siren
of horrors, a stain that soaks in deep without fear
and without mercy. For what are you asking?
Who do you think invented mercy? Me?