Moral Responsibility

know how to appall oneself / what an unbreathable suffocation / His little fingers against the photos / this residual gesture / the mouths closing / clerk at the doorway / the moth of the key / ball-darkness illuminated by a candle / names / dates / precious and gibberish / the instant grin / extended hand which prohibitions / adjusted / rigid / before beginning / to do / say / decide / not to hide when it's night outside / become candelabra when the step sounds / (the duty to remember / but what is this moral obligation / if not all these acts / refusing to leave / embracing what comes / daring / to dare three times / until this classic of air / because the myth / is always a '?' that stays lost)

A litote is not a poem—a litote is a figure of speech used by ChatGPT in a million and n generations. A statement of not followed by a statement that may be less. "This is not an example—it is a litote," for example. Made by generations of poets and then marketing executives, the litote of Shakespeare is not a bad idea in a poem. It makes you think you are thinking. Yet a litote is not a solution—it is the cost of living. This poem costs a room in San Francisco, $2k minimum, plus if the poet eats, that too. Generations have been lost. The litote has the right to defend itself. Love is not time's fool and the litote is not the hive mind's whip, is not the question of how future generations eat after I who makes the poem early-exits these last two lines. This poem is the agreement not to talk about that. Eat what? How many hundred thousand tokens to explain. The litote is not the water bottle. Is not the same red sky.