The Cake Is A Lie

by A.J. Huffman
 

These makeshift bloodprints scream at me

from all sides as I fight, unsighted, through the maze

I believe to be your mind. Sidestepping emotion-

al boobytraps designed to destruct us both,

I am your willing guinea pig. Pre-programmed,

I am following. The sound of your promised touch

is enough to drive me forward through each level’s devastation . . .
 

Are you/they designed to test me or destroy me?

That conception turns me inside. Out

is a concept I abandoned eons ago, before I began

dodging the precariously balanced bullets

spinning on ice I will never be able to see

even as I direct its flow (or so I’ve been taught).

It blankets my view in void

space, begging for a [port]hole: an escape

hatch to actualization. I try to vocalize

this new ideology, but you have not granted me a voice. Over

night I simmer in the cold eye of [ac]knowledge-

Meant to tax my understanding of what is . . .
 

True: extraction is both feasible and attainable.
 

I allow my conscience to ascend. A lever

is broached. Green lights follow

me . . . spanning the fray

                                        [ed ends of another nameless abyss].