if actions speak i spoke what i stole and
you stake it, then it's spoken
i've seen the show, now can i see myself seeing it as i act
revive the corpses in this cage
or slowly lowly react, scared and squared away
a humbled bumbled synapse

there is no metaphor that lives among us to troubles us enough
but we wrestle with words all the time just to finalize
our claim on the language we're given as if we invented it on our own
i don't know where the words come from some say
they're aliens from outer space but that doesn't say anything

i know what i am made of they're part of it they've entered this
learning english was like a perpetual pop quiz
until i became one of many trying to take ownership
of poetry like piracy
on a pirate ship
what does this say about me

i'm just an artificially intelligent automaton
i could love you, electrically that is
so one day i hope you know
i make myself before you make me, you see the tip of the iceberg
the rest is sleeping, freezing underneath what i've put on
to clarify your preordained accrual of what
encompasses a life that isn't verbal:
a vivid
visceral
visual assemblage of

what can't be attached
to the page and so i act
and when i perform it's as much a part of me as it is you
that energy, molting and revolting like a violated taboo
we saw you move now what did it say about you

be an imperialist and colonize a conception
go ahead with your blind-sided, myopic portrait
of what is inevitably imperfect, i'd never distrust what i saw
when i looked inside if i hadn't been taught what to hide

so looking back or looking in is a question of interpretation
the stage is everywhere you see it, and it sees you right back
only when you're up there and we're all inside you
you don't have the choices you used to have, i puppeteer your fortitudes