This poem was written by John Nolan:

Stopping

I cannot stop stopping
I simply cannot

My brain will keep talking
Unless I can slot

Away impulse and image and instant and id
And if they persist a visit begins
From the wilderness washing
Like particle mist

Mutated mangled from sixty minutes
All bundled in twelves
Two halves a piece
Until they reach forty
The shape of the beast

Is temptation angels
And demons deceased

Then delivered in bodies
Clad white robe and wings

Then delivered in bodies
Clad white robe and true

To penetrate down
To highest accrued

Amounts of swiney snouts
To sell for market value
Unceasing

Peaces like a river filled our lungs
So we grew gills and ignored the flood

Peaces like a river filled our lungs
So we grew gills and ignored the flood

Peaces like a river filled our lungs
So we grew gills and ignored the flood

Fish have feelings they’re just unaware
Birthed ancestors with thicker heads of hair
Louder coughs and squarer teeth
To sink and suck out the barrier reef
Efficiently effectively minimal effort shown
Giv’n to drowning eternal in drone
Torrent sound fractured pouring out
Catapult lightning cracked bipolar drought
Rainclouds of death to life reborn
But our gill-frilled necks let us bow to ignore
Lungs still filled from 300 million years back
But lunges to heav’n still scarring our backs

I cannot stop stopping
I simply cannot

My brain will keep talking
Unless I can slot

Unless I can swim
And tread the whole globe

But my chest is tightening
My sliced gills are now closed

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