six times grey
       

let us consider it an experiment:
the peaches from your neighbor's tree
could sustain you for a week. you think
you'll make a pie of them, a cobbler,
but then gobble them in a day. to fill
nights you play screen-time roulette,
bet on the likeability of strangers;
mark the dominant traits, flag the flaws.
maybe one requires additional research,
but data is harder to harvest virtually,
so you make a study of your body, no end
to its fluctuations; a stranger in itself.
you asses limits & note complications.
the strategies are clichés learned by rote,
even in their repetition unable to quiet
the mind's badgering. your test subject
displays difficulty with comprehension.
your test subject is a bird. they remain
awake nightly, refuse food. saw blue,
now ask what color? what color am i?
the subject is agitated. in further trials
they are increasingly unresponsive.
we ride out the funding. we publish
the results. some say failure teaches us
but field reports contradict hypotheses.
all figures reflect maximum containment.
there is no question of ethics here. we
all diminish. a peach rots. a parrot lies.

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from Salt Hill
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