Temperance Card

But now that a history of provocation has passed, the unshaded cross-stitches
Of antibody—primed for the same strain—compass these dispositions of memory
Powerlessness blesses us who are run in a single stretch with changing ratios of sensoria.
With half-remedies of poisoned barbs, or sweetened doses; punitive regimes, or rest,
Scaffolds of tissue are hard wearing— a worn braille of the pleasure of being seen by you
Having heard so much, and are now privileged to see—factual descriptions expanded

To include sand, or were pressed into wafers of microchips. The equation expanded
Conforming to expectations, except for an unchanging answer it continuously stitched;
A low-level inflammation exerting its effect on ripped muscle—for growth— as being seen
Is. Action arrows, detached from the obligations of their cells, compose memory
Cut to the pattern of the wound. Spotlighting the sacred panels, with little hope of rest,
One’s survival needs have been met. And the form left incomplete, nestles in sensoria.

Back from the bar’s green-backed mirror, where pert young women compile sensoria
Mistaken for arrest lists. Three-quarter angles against an ember background, they expand,
Being drawn into some confidence, a virus loitering for decades in a nerve branch; clients rest
Their wallets, if for mopping up condensation rings. Their still operable zippers stitched
Shut. That certainly destroys any such illusions of sleeping, before flooding lamps of memory.
Comparable to the resynthesis of Pyrex; a face is soda glass, perhaps shatters at being seen—

At the risk of suggesting that consciousness is a vessel adulterated by being seen,
Separate sequences of life render their estimates.  Rarely, an accurate sensoria
Permits these longings to grow.  This lethal hardware—a vial’s watered silk of memory,
Graciously restores the uneventful choreography—a child without measure, expansive,
Yet an alarm would be ringing, and there would be no plan. Perhaps without a stitch
Of clothing for giving testimony, nor a bed’s naked imprint, the defenses rest.

If not necessarily this, then the involved paths, signaled distress, or restlessness
Communicated a desire to humiliate, it seemed, and went. Those days, being seen
Delayed the early start, and freedom to choose silence. Whenever the side stitched
From long runs of scratching at molecular topiary known to be there, for which sensoria
Existed to grope after, there was a substitute to pull between flat-bottomed flasks—expansive
For man’s benefit. After the sweeping away of death, or destroyed mate’s memory

For factors that could well influence the life, for reductive scraps that matched memory,

Those unbothered by the inheritance now comb their screen lights with restless,
Transparent fingers. The same that cut the hoarded malignancy and now expand
Bodies of work at their severed speeds. So apprehend the nature of being seen
Rejuvenated, at last by legitimacy. Being united in common defense, neatly stitched
They are rewarded by the sight of an avoided street, and reduced to sensoria,

Unable to cultivate the self-tolerance of pleasant memories, there are sensoria
Nobody believes. The conversation forms a simple interrupted stitch, and restless
From being seen, a searching inner face expands by whomever is imprinted upon it.