SYNAPTIC TRANSRIVERS OF BABYLON

In the trailing antenna of a nation at war you awaken spontaneously
from a seaplane tender, a hand on painfully cold bars,
father's scrap-metal driven by rubber bands
and with a hole in the wall between the two rooms with birds flapping
and chirping and feathers not to be shackled by a pack of bureaucrats
you must mount a machine and become acquainted with disequilibrium
to seek shade, her red or green bars of light
in their wallpaper patterns; the man with blindsight;
everlasting doors; the kind of cars, furniture,
that vent violent, uncontrollable shapes of music
ice-locked 100 miles away, waiting for a slow, deep cry of welcome