Imminent and Unknown

These are the oaths sworn
upon pain and consecrated
with all those foul substances
that chase down our throats
to fight the pain, like that
old woman who swallowed
spiders to catch flies, and
the anti-inflammatories
wiggle, the narcotics jiggle
and tickle inside us, wearing
thin the fabric of sleep, until
we are only pin-holed
membranes for thought,
broken and lame, made
stupid by the action and
reaction of our mortal
consequence, our quick
decaying isotope of
existence.

Even when the agony has
passed, we are ruined by
the memory of our flaw,
haunted by the thought of
its return, as imminent and
unknown as the appearance
of comets in the sky to
cave dwellers.

These are the oaths sworn
upon boredom and obsolescence,
trundling down the tattered
magic carpet of dead-end
work and piecemeal
compensation, in the
imperfect remembrance of
worksongs and the thought
that labor was ennobling,
holy the dirt and grime
under the nail, beatified the
burnt brown of the bare,
muscled shoulder.

Even when moving with
purpose, we know our
efforts to be uninspired,
lacking the ruthless and
mechanical efficiency that
causes the world to spin
now, and we doubt all
that is made within our
own ken, preferring some
injection-molded, machine
cut, iconograph marked
replica of reality, for if
it is fallible, it is the
cast off product of folk
unknown to us, and
no more a sign of our
played-out hopes than
our own unmade beds
and sheets unwashed,
foul and stinking beneath
us.