all we are is water in the shopvac

(from Miami Nights 1984 "Accelerated" on Youtube)

"When I come across instances of this folk understanding of autism, I am reminded of Edward Said’s 1978 description of the orientalist gaze, in which the exoticised subjects endure a kind of fascinated scrutiny, and are then rendered ‘without depth, in swollen detail’. Never allowed to speak for themselves, their behaviours are itemised, but not actually understood. The observer, meanwhile, is assumed to be neutral, authoritative and wise. This creates a simulacrum of the Orient, packaged for the consumption of the West."

the strongest ice at last
succumbs to the world's brute warming.
cracks race across a plain,
cliffs splinter & collapse.

not quite the last of winter,
but end of so many things.
all creatures on the run.
even the plants. even the plants.

& humans, who should know
before their very eyes
the fruits of their incessant
tampering, remain

encased in the strongest ice.