A Small, Fractured History: Parts One and Two

rife with inaccuracy and doubt.

 the voice is not animated but automated

and the accompanying photographs look plagiarized

 but the voice attempts to choke out sounds

sounds that sound like

tick

tick

tick

and then it waits, it listens

it ticks ticks ticks a story

recounts a history

fictionalizes diminutive manmade glory

that capitalizes on pretext

it is here that the voice invites you to leave

take note of your exits

because this story is of the feckless

in a manner called ineffective

a story of the reckless wrecking the wrecked.

cracking open the surface of a burnt planet

splitting like the pit of a fruit

collapsing under the steel and absolute rule of a monarch butterfly

caught on fire

here men destroy men without knowing their names

men without names are no longer men

they are masses

and masses with televisions are no longer masses

they’re ideas

and ideas without rationality are rampant

ideas run rampant without question will fail

ideas without question are fatal

ideas written in bricks and spelled out in LED penetrate the eyes

filter the through the retina and frontal cortex

and ferment at the crest of the spine

they request action

not of the brain

but of the hands

ideas written inside hands

disconnected from the spine

and monitored by remote control call for action

action calls for guns

guns of metal or of words or of faith

guns of faith congeal in the fingertips and curl the joints inward

inward facing nameless men with the joints of their fingers curled into fists

lie in waiting

waiting for the commands of the remote controls

which rests in the hands of the men naming the masses

the reckless wrecking the wrecked

the men with the remote controls trade their manufactured ideas

for identity

identity therefore becomes not what a man is

but what he has

the man accounts for what he has in lists

lists of paper he’s collected or space he’s claimed or women he’s fucked

claiming everything for his own

if only just to have

because to have is to be

to be is to have things to hold in one’s hands

and to hide from everyone else

meanwhile

men without names with guns in their hands grow restless

claiming faith

holding the weight of metal and fate in their palms

fate, plans, dreams, hopes, expectations, pathos, the way things were supposed to be

all spelled out by the hands holding remote controls

detonators for ticking time bombs

they’ve created time bombs out of the men whose names they’ve took away

and called it fate!

exploited the faith that the men without names

offered them

in exchange for things

things

lying heavy in their hands dead weight gathered up in their arms guarded by lock and key

things

things traded for identity

the voice ticks

the men again grow restless

here men without bothering to ask for their names.