wires... and the concept of breathing

Look at me. Look at me.

See me swinging there.

Swinging, like a pendulum.

Tick-tock.

Hear the aching of my heart.

Hear it straining and groaning in exertion,

pumping motor oil, gasoline

to the rusted joints and tubes and pipes.

Hear my old brittle bones creak and snap.

See me swinging.

See me swinging there.

See me on your television, preserved 

in rainbows,

in perfect Technicolor brilliance,

in red,

in blue,

in green.

See me as a phantom of light,

a flickering pattern of pixels and diode injections,

gaseous fluctuations and pinpricks of ink.

See where my shadow falls,

the damning hand, the wind-up ghost

long upon the hour of arrival.

Do not be afraid. This is not death.

Watch them put a rope around my neck.

Watch the steel cable run taut with sudden exquisite agony.

See my legs dangle and twist,

my neck snap like a spastic twig.

This is it. This is all I ever wanted.

This is my way of saying goodbye.

Hic iacet rex quondam rexque oblitus.

And when at last my legs stop twitching and kicking

and my body moves through the air silently and effortlessly,

compelled only by mass, fluidity and compressibility,

see me swinging there.

See me swinging there.