How long
can you hold your breath?

Two minutes?
Two thousand years?

The city sits
upon your neck—

snakes,
so still
suspended
upside-down

in drinking water—

saliva
now a nutrient

feeding grand machines.
Modern industry rushing
past your memory,

quaint,
unthreatening
fragment of nostalgia
that you are;

frozen,
beheaded

as you are.

Published as lyrics for GODHEADSCOPE’s Patience EP, 2011.