The death of curiosity.
Then came the death of curiosity.
It was sudden and it was quick.
Many did not see it coming.
It woke up one morning and couldn't move its face away
from itself.
Narcissists would have gilded its frame.
An actor would have leaned in for a lesson.
A mime would have surrendered.
Painters and sculptors would have
gathered their instruments.
Children would have tried to make it laugh.
But curiosity was alone in its death,
as no one knew that it had died.
Politicians graced it in speeches.
Scientists alluded to it in private conversations.
Neighbors greeted it on Sundays.
Crowds assumed it was in their laps.
All the while, curiosity was at capacity.
It had what it had had, and it would have no more.
Then came the death of the country.
It was not sudden, and it was not quick.
Few did not see it coming.
It woke up one morning and unhinged itself.
It did not leave a piece of land or a body of water.
It did not leave a flag.
It left no memory of soaring spacecraft or landing men.
There were no museums to document its descent.
There were no old maps to study.
Even the wars that never really died
had no more blood to go around.
Human and beast alike hovered in the air,
yet there was nothing birdlike about them.
They were not leaves ushered by the wind
into the great hallways of time.
They were still human, and they were still
beasts that simply had no ground to stand on.
The feet of trees wiggled their ankles in the air.
Buildings that stood up to the sky
sat unmoored from their foundations.
Then came the death of surrealism.
And it was slow, and it was painful,
and no one saw it coming.
If it woke up one morning, not a soul could say,
its oxygen was reality in its history of ailments.
The supply of raw materials to manipulate
had exhausted itself.
The shape of things had simply depleted the inventory
of possible contortions.
Imagined forms were confined to the unconscious universe,
floating in the horizon with animals and plants.
Painters and sculptors lost all perspective.
No politician could claim chaos as a constituent.
No chemist could conduct an experiment.
The ink of philosophers had no medium to wander.
The dissolution of gestures gave actors nothing to mime.
Narcissists could not reflect upon their reflections.
Children could not fix their laughter.
The world could not place its fears.