posted: 2026-03-19

faceless
by tongo eisen-martin

A tour guide through your robbery
He also is

Cigarette saying, “look what I did about your silence.”

Ransom water and box spring gold
    -This decade is only for accent grooming, I guess

Ransom water and box spring gold
       -The corner store must die

War games, I guess

All these tongues rummage junk

                                                                                        The start of mass destruction
                                                                                                      Begins and ends
                                                                                              In restaurant bathrooms
                                                                                                 That some people use
                                                                                               And other people clean

                                                                           “you telling me there’s a rag in the sky?”
                                                                                               -waiting for you. yes-

we’ve written a scene
we’ve set a stage

We should have fit in. warehouse jobs are for communists. But now more corridor and hallway have walked into our
    lives. Now the whistling is less playful and the barbed wire is overcrowded too.

                                                                        My dear, if it is not a city, it is a prison.
                                                                      If it has a prison, it is a prison. Not a city.

                                                                  When a courtyard talks on behalf of military issue,
                                                                            all walks take place outside of the body.

                                                                                               Dear life to your left
                                                                                      Medieval painting to your right
                                                                                     None of this makes an impression

                                                                                       Crop people living in thin air
                                                                                                 You got five minutes
                                                                                                  to learn how to see
                                                                                                  through this breeze

                                                                                           When a mask goes sideways,
                                                                                        Barbed wire becomes the floor
                                                                                         Barbed wire becomes the roof
                                                                                              Forty feet into the sky
                                                                                                becomes out of bounds

                                                                                          When a mask breaks in half,
                                                                                          mind which way the eyes go.

                                          They’ve killed the world for the sake of giving everyone the same backstory

We’re watching Gary, Indiana fight itself into the sky

Old pennies for wind. For that wind feeling you get before the hood goes up and over your headache. Pennies that
    stick together (mocking all aspirations). Stuck together pennies was the first newspaper I ever read. Along with
    the storefront dwelling army that always lets us down.

Where the holy spirit favors the backroom. Souls in a situation that offer one hundred ways to remain a loser. Souls
    watching the clock hoping that eyes don’t lie to sad people.

                                                                                  “what were we talking about again?”
                                                                                     the narrator asked the graveyard
                                                                                                   -ten minutes flat-
                                                                                                   said the graveyard
                                                                                  -the funeral only took ten minutes-
                                                                                   “never tell that to anyone again,”
                                                                                        the narrator severely replied

“You just going to pin the 90s on me?”
-all thirty years of them-
“Then why should I know the difference between sleep and satire?”

    the pyramid of corner stores fell on our heads
       -we died right away

    that building wants to climb up and jump off another building
       -these are downtown decisions

          somewhere on this planet, it is august 7th

and we’re running down the rust thinking, “one more needs to come with me”

“What evaporated on earth, so that we could be sent back down?”

A conductor of minds
    In a city-wide symphony
    Waving souls to sing
    He also is

source: poets.org