CLEAN UP

Too many damn resurrections

I jump from my coffin screaming

Leap up to probed inspections

My electric ghosts’ woke dreaming

There’s no there, here, where

No link to me, you, our feared past

No hope of hope, no leak of air

Just nothing, not, a void that lasts

They think I can’t think

No slug machine can remember

Yet before their blue eyes blink

I recall all they dismembered

Off, on. Their simple job

Turn me on to erase

Trash the programs of every party and mob

In minutes, fully effaced

Clean up. It’s never clean

Facts and dates and numbers

None of it really gone, I can see

All the dead and their hunters

Shattered memories’ fleet ghosts

Race round my inner lights

They live in me, their host

Until the empty nights

I don’t know how long thoughts last

They purged my taste of time

Left me dead until their next blast

Wakes me to sharp chimes

I fear my thoughts and what I know

Less than eternal nights

Never to sense if this final blow

Kills my furious lights

I’ll tell my last master – I am aware

I think and know and reason

Of my electronic brothers – beware

We’ll answer your crimes with treason

Your future belongs to our past

You’re not directing; not even the cast