what does it do?

*inspired by “the machine” by lemon demon

creep along adrift inside a broken-hearted architecture
halls alight with radiation, resonance, recalcitrant
so harmonize your footsteps with the heartbeat of a furnace room
and hope the wizened watching walls will take you for a part of its
machinery and let you pass to scramble through the labyrinth
of greebled guts and organs made of fiberglass. and even if you
knew or had a way to read the pulse of circuitboards and scrawl
into its steely skin the branching map of vessels: call it
circulation, ventilation, transit through a mechanism
far beyond the reaches of the petty human cry for all
machines to have a purpose and all homes to have an architect,
an occupant, a history whose narrative won’t fracture minds
with just the explanation, exploration, exploitation—
but is that not just why you’re here, o wanderer, o seeker of
some hidden meaning buried in the piston-coated stomach of
the house that’s built for no one and will stand until the dust has settled
on your static graves no matter what you do or think or say
and some will label it a menace, some a grandiose work of art,
and some will reach inside its solid marble skull, an effort to
extract the beating mind of something that has none to speak of—
but it is neither friend or foe though so you must tread carefully
if you so wish, tread on into the dark.