A Temporary Lobotomy or Everlasting City by Julie Kim Shavin

An utterly coherent madman,
pure to the point of nonexistence,
spews the complacency of the saved.

Happy hour, sad hour in the concrete kingdom
iris soothe-blue to pinkblack
beneath a meatmarket moon.

Who was not born of a puppet – those ruthless
life-giving machines (our salvation due to)
with their grim addictions to fingers and air?

To write the autobiography of autobiography
would be something, [he thinks], but a tyranny
of incandescent coordinates shrieks from streets,

broken modi operandi! Bro  keNN operAndi! No –
No patent on the technology of love.
The moon laments its denouement.

From moment to moment your body,
like the dark side of honey,
cavorts the wind blind, thrashing the night

to morning sings of snow –
As alas, the city.  Remains. Ever conscious,
brain out of its eversleeting mind.