Mild Calibration

Break open the center and let it out
this nurtured, confounded realization of loneliness
as it spills. It gushes into the streets,
infecting everyone with an emptiness—unnoticed,
we’re walking amongst corpses that can’t smell their kind
till heads turn at the sound of someone living, screaming, writhing—
dying.

Like how we arrange lovers and hearts in cupboards in the mind
murderers and betrayers roam freely, they’re killed often
no room for consolidation and refinement, schedules don’t permit
the need to feel is greater than the need to believe
and no words of wisdom or profundity can replace the hunger
to crave the flesh, the mind, the soul, becoming whole in anger and confusion—
simply.