& I get it, it’s not the market’s place/
desire/priority, to accommodate me,
what the market will bear doesn’t care
for me to assert what might

curdle the vibe/chip the veneer/offer shoppers
less-than-a-smile while we’re
worshipping the god of transactions

—it’s a functional [kind of] exhaustion, daily
not to correct them—at work, ignoring your
THEY/THEM shirt, forgetting & getting
irritable
—& yes,
the queers
clock you & grok you, the autists & the artists—

but the rest of them, the wild West of them,
the marketplace & denial &
the keeping-your-job of them—

—and you want
to get on with your life, with your day. So it’s

a functional [kind of] exhaustion, daily
not to ask [again] [it’s tiring] for simple recognition, to fall back in
to the privilege of passing, which is also
the failure to be identified

*

How often, you thought, how often a thought
taps at the window, edge of the brain:

vibrant Weimar library, flaming then aflame,
pink triangles, & black

a brick hitting the back
of your best friend’s backpack

snow-fatal fence posts not
40 miles away

Aktion t4

Pink triangles & black—

*

—You could hide
completely—
from the part of the public
that wants to
excise you
from its body politic

—rational, really,

not at all insanity

to learn [faulty tho it is
in its premise: that they can erase us]
[again] [& everywhere] [again] that intended lesson

*

You know the definition of insanity,
they keep telling me, at dinner, repeating Repeating the same 
actions over & over again & expecting
a different outcome
[like that
describes madness
instead of trauma]

Or maybe, you want [them] to say, maybe
we’re just terrible at learning. Maybe we fail
to read history, to self-reflect, & we expect

persistence to bend the world to our
will, for better/ill [the Big Lie is the American Way]
—or maybe we
survive by defiance—

You’ll likely build another Institut

Ask [yet] again

Hope its fire doesn’t [yet] [again]
invite fire

      You can reconcile [kind of] the need to unmask,
the necessity, how audacious it is to act
against rationality, to expect
both outcomes, different & same [maybe,
you think, this time we’ll all survive]

You can see the path requires it
You can see the path coming round again

You can see liberation & know it might cost
the library—firework
consuming itself into being

You can be quite at home with madness