Virtual Visceral

by Kerryn Potgieter

Let me scrawl broken words across your screen

Hearing your daydream between the whitenoise

of sermon and servitude.

My body of sinew at a loss in your serpentine

thinking and thrumming,

in over my head and out of my depth

in your idiom traps and your tight braille maps of tomorrow.

 

Familiarity breeds amalgamation.

The voices I know well enough to recognise

I never hear.

Only strangers are perfect.

Only Perfect Strangers have a voice.

I'm only deaf when someone tries to tell me something.

 

Adopt a stance or surrender.

Wonder how many words I use up

saying little or nothing at all.

Talk is not cheap.

I can't make the payments anymore

Shhh...