This (and only this)
is how things
currently stand:
the present is just
the future's grave
remembrance of the past.
As electrons fizz
and fudge
the black gap
between dendrite
trees and their
bygone axons,
words whose constituent
letters aren't clear
cohere and steal silences
which can't be
stolen back.
They say that
no one's fully conscious
until they feel
desperate—
and disconcertingly
certain
that they don't belong
as they've come
to the fulminant nothing
from which
all of their thoughts
have sprung.
