coronation

My head
is cotton and wool inside
I can't very easily say how high
I would have to get,
to see over this fog
it could go up
forever, like a cloud to God
and I'd still be swimming in it, upside-down

like a goldfish, dead.
Or a blind man acclaimed
by his kingdom,
crowned

our element

We inevitably drown
from the air or the water or
the void in our lungs -
Fragile creatures
are we, with our heart strings strung
out of tune,

with the chord
that in memory rings,
true - perfect pitch, always!

- but out of tune, we
sing

did the right thing

And if you did the right thing,
would it ring? In those ancestral halls
that your conscience will pace
ever wondering? Saying "yes,"
"we did the right thing." If you did
the right thing, would there be that
reward, good beyond every hope
in your straining throat,
as it's put to the sword? Yes,
there would. And you know
in your heart: past each lie
that your mind tries to sweetly
describe, to embitter your choice
the next time
that a fork forces you
from the path that your wish
would so fervently stride - but
you passed the test! You pass
the test, you will pass the
test. You did the right
thing.

many-worlds

There's
there isn't, there is
not

A thing you could say.

To rescue the world, on the brink
of an alternate-universe cusp
in the moment that us
stood a-wavering thus,
we could never have gone
down that easy fork. It

was unworthy of us. It
was not there for what
we knew we could be. It
was unworthy.

Just as we are,
now.
Unworthy, by virtue
of what has never transpired -
if it doesn't come true, then it couldn't.

But how?
It is only
the truth of what we both knew
that stands here today, to accuse us liars.

And that, we allow.

There are times that come,

these are times that come
only once in our life,
to blast our eyes -
and we'll never see clear
past our chosen pains
in the retinal sear,
every ghost remains
from the moment we walked
through a truth that was
so excruciating -
wasn't real,
was us.