Dead Letters

From cold concrete floor to plaster ceiling in cardboard boxes, damp and peeling; beneath migraine fluorescence, humming, blinking incessance. They languish spectrally bound and gagged, indexed, filed, stamped and tagged: a desert vista of yellowing paper. They say nothing, travel nowhere. Confetti never thrown on a wedding day, left in the box to waste and decay; paintings in fathomless caves, snapshots in bottomless graves. Music played in a sound-proof cell, composers marooned, no tales to tell: a stranglehold of disconnection. They are wired to insulation. Emotions, desires unwittingly fated as dead sea scrolls never translated into languages of any sense, communiqués of obsolescence. Gridlocked and ultimately stranded, impotent and countermanded: fervent wishes hermetically sealed. They are stoic, statue silent. Structures teetering wide and tall, towers leaning, threaten to fall; captive informants bursting to spill truths or lies, to redeem or kill. They are cast adrift like accursed ships, alphabets hanging on time frozen lips: a dead séance switchboard. They are ghost messengers in stasis. Secrets harboured and dreams incubated for those still waiting and those who have waited in endless, futile anticipation, ageing and wracking with desperation. Lovers denied the words of romance who die bleeding hope, are given no chance: broken upon this cinder block shore. They render incalculable lives destroyed.