PROLOGUE: READING OF THE MINUTES Lost adrift at sea I grasped from the debris some forlorn, forgotten object wholly inadequate to express myself I’ve been working since before I can remember transforming now for so long my mind and muscles are so tired and tender know nothing now but my work song oh, the minutia oh, the minutes oh, how they turn to hours after countless hours of toil, sweat, horror, discovery, and transfiguration, I transformed that unrecognizable object into this

you always said you weren’t afraid to work you always said you weren’t afraid but when i saw you sitting on your horse i always thought you had it made you once knew what you wanted from your work but that was before you did your best before you did your worst who were you working for why is it that every time i get to work i feel the time slipping away don’t get to keep them both, that’s not how it works just ask yesterday discarded tools picked up by fools made into jewels offered to you feed my work horse beat my work shift horse if it please thy workship

oh, the hours spent watching this intense fixed staring just barely not exactly directly back at me this arduously calculated imprecision in countless repetitions these innumerable infinitesimal unawarenesses spawning this continuous avoidance reflected blindingly in my own incalculable ravings fashions and transfigurations, trends and tendencies right down to the trembling seven layer muscle somehow resembling what you see before you why do i keep these hours, so faithfully? how can i sleep when these powers won’t let me be? waking dreams continue continuing while other scenes play on and on, in repeat and a memory rushes in bringing melody to the din within me how loud i sing, wings pound inertially drowned by the ring of these shackles’ security and if someone who understands can appraise these calloused hands (for free) oh then, maybe I will know which ground is best to grow me someday, maybe I can work on something that doesn’t hurt or fade

something in something from within the in/outside of the din on the out/inside calls again ah but only when the workhorse stops to listen in mid stride remember him as if he’s always been nearer than the masters around far away, hear the day when work is play and ennui gives way to a silent sound “i did not mean to interrupt as you drink from your broken cup of me” after many stormy years i’m the only one who hears the grinding of the gears and the coming of worlds unclear or a reason to paint my tears in a portrait of my fears lovingly alone as i’ve ever been, i am seen as i’m yet unseen by the eye he looks like me one hundred planets wide eye stretches on across the great divide and if someone who understands gently lets go of my hands i’ll grow wings and as time does its work on me i transcribe its melody as it rings and until i remember how to say “can you hear me now?” i will sing

the horse’s work is given to him, he has options but no choice he performs his task perfectly, he has muscles but no voice the work proceeds as planned, and the empire grows with master’s fame the horse did all the work, though no one knows his name all time pressure changes rally round the storm is stabler than you know accretion disks slice tomahawk down like butter through the windows it’s coming i say, but watch your tongue i do believe it’s on fire anyway, which mouth are you now speaking from and to what do your words aspire? for one’s accretion is another’s diminution depending where you’re sitting ten new problems come free with every solution each demanding you to do its bidding but back to the current events of focus evinced by goosebumps and flow galactic eyebrows furrow at us as if our small struggle they know inversion of flesh reveals luminous magma emitting a frequency describable only as song particles teeming serenely, excitedly aglow like shooting stars, or birds at dawn when will you settle down? Alas, still asks. there’s no one else here, just my choices is this thing on? I ask, aware only of my amusement which spirals into fragmentation at defined pitch i rise aloft, changing only in scope as my song loudens unaware of the things most dear to me, but keeping them fed my self starving of overinflation, I listen as my ear recalculates a signal that’s been coming in since the beginning listen, it’s right where you’re looking listen, it’s happening now listen, it has never happened before

slow motion accident destiny there it goes, everything i’ve known here it comes, everything i’ve grown here they come, people all my own horse stars racing on now i have become welcome in this home all along disguised and so alone only had my work for my company and with nothing else it’s overtaken me this shackle and plough are as much mine as anything i’ve known and now it’s over like a protecting shell it came off in due time and I’m uncovered my work becomes me, grows my field of gravity and I hover wait what what?? stable state constant change chaos straight burning strange as i’ve always known and it’s always been eventually gravity must win and the final tool with which to defend pressured electrons, as they come to end ahh, ooh ** with you, my friend it’s always scintillating you who taught me what I know and put me to meaningful work are none the more prosperous for having taken all the credit it’s okay, it will all be over soon don’t trust me, just ask yesterday with every further step the burden grows and yet deliverance’s beacon shows i’ll get there with or without this weight though the fruit’s bittersweet that it makes i kept these hours, so faithfully that it changed the inner shape of me watched it fall away by my command perhaps abandoned, but anyway outgrown. investigation results: the order was internal. abandon ship, become the vessel as long as i could hear listening i was never afraid to work but now the din has grown so deafening that it’s droning my words into dirt from bird’s eye view up here, it’s clear to see the bulk of this work rests on me only my own generosity keeps me breathing deeply the-so-lar-wind ~ racing across the universe a beacon of my own translates as orders internal: system reboot i’m working back to something not unknown by the same task that raised us we blaze a new route it’s one thing to burn, to burn up entirely another unfortunate circumstances notwithstanding a blast of hot air lifts my labor like a lover until work, suspended, becomes its own landing destruction drones on, a dramatized distraction the din of weary working groans abounds all voices caught in chorus-of-conflict and reaction i hear there must be music in these sounds what is it that is happening to me? i’m unable or unwilling anymore though all the lights are on ostensibly it’s sucked in by the black hole in the floor to finish this i must pull out my deepfake and train with great precision and protection for the blade which whittles this keepsake i suspect will also sever the connection for not even the mirror earns our trust like most of us, it only knows its view we think we’re mad to smash it, though we must as long as we mean ‘we’ when we say ‘you’ ~ —there’s —a bea-con —across —horizon —it’s —the same one —that i’ve been describing for some time —but now —i must —race —onward —away —my work —eventually becomes a pull all of its own ~ One day, work will be done Yes one day, work will be done O my lord, O my lord By my hand, or else by none, by my hand, or else by none, My own work is my only word. they said i’s born to work they ain’t known me from birth but provided everything ‘cept a word about my wings i could not seem to wait so I carried the weight then he gave me a name and then he rose to fame life was never the same seemed like i was to blame one day i heard a sound figured out a workaround in time cost me too much my work i couldn’t touch then my work came to me most conspicuously now i live as a star still don’t know who we are work’s what i’ve always been no beginning, no end no rest for weary me long as we choose to be work lives on after me in the form of gravity work will never be done that’s the way that we run as known since we begun, “by your hand or by none”