The Hanging

​
The silent shenanigans hidden behind
eyes that swear secrets to their graves
seem to lurk off of the ceiling, these days,
and they’re telling us to hush up that silence,
to gulp down the panic rising from our finger tips
spreading across our toes,
gulp it down as it etches
closer to the vocal cords,
before it cuts them off:
the panic is wildfire within a wildfire and
the containment creating a threatening girdle
around our necks, and our cheeks
are stained rouge with our tendons
stretched to their extremes-
shaking comes naturally,
but we keep steady.

The contentment is dragged out
of our subconsciousness: unconscious,
we’re staring at reflections of
pale faces, gaunt spaces, faded lips,
like a mere impression
of what must be people,
or perhaps what were.

The secrets are laid out like corpses inside coffins:
bare, brutal, crude samples of resources
that will never be utilised;
the silent shenanigans are screamed out
of the vocal cords- no longer bundled;
and the shaking shambles
our bodies to the ground,
bodies function in harmony with
the hunched fingers of death,
and its fingers form the noose of panic, again-
it’s alright now, for
our bodies hang from the ceiling,
our bodies are now dead,
and the secrets are still safe
behind the stench of dying in our heads.