panic eats at my teeth because i cant gnaw it to sleep,
eating the extra fat and my intestinal wires are piggy and lined
with calories
and salt
and panic.
when my eyelids are sewn shut its hard to see anything but the entire world
forcing itself into my hands,
saying, here, take it, but i cant take it.
its the vertigo of the north pole and the south pole and the equator meeting
and dispersing after pleasantries,
exiting from the wrong monumental door as they leave
so now the oceans
panic
because they cant find their shores to hug and i cant blame them for the misplaced
land mass
but m
Latin
I found a dead language, rotting
in a book older than the trees
that had birthed it. It had joined its lovers—
fallen men of an archaeologists' Empire.
I asked why only it had a tomb,
while others crumbled in desert
mass graves
nobody answered.
The words just smiled at me,
a skull's last grin as I lowered the lid
to think.
The question bled back that night
dripped in my ear like Hamlet's doom.
Why, I asked, have I heard nothing
of your miscarried siblings:
the Carpenter's Aramaic,
bearded Old English,
even Attic Greek that launched
a thousand ships—are they
not also de