The Addiction Exchange

[TranquillityBase]

Human commodities
disdained into alienation
disclaimed in laborious solitude
restrained by horse-hide whips
of the multitudes, beatific hermaphrodites
struggle through the streams  is there a way - punctuation or indents, perhaps - to emphasize that the subject here is from line 1?
of a digital dark age
past the edges of empathy
lifted out of sin by sequential angels.

Particles cut off
are painted with ashes,
prayed into dust.  All good images here.

The dance of the instant,
spirits of off-chance slavery  having a little trouble with "off-chance" here - is it synonymous with "unlucky" as in a losing bet?
sing with severed tongues.

These offerings of contradiction
empiricist feuds fueled by spite a good observation about the spite which underlies too much pretended empiricism.
hegemonic demons claw back
with metallic arguments.

Dictated nerves cry out
salvation in a pin-hole 
where orbital eclipses  did you mean ellipses?
dismember and calculate. 

Clattering madness  reprise of metallic arguments - nice.
of indivisible veins opened  no suicidal cutting, then, only needling
for penetration by cooling
underground delight
finite and so bright.  worse than finite - as tolerance develops, the window between dose and overdose narrows, then slams shut.

Must confess that, in mild critique, I'm reading this as a mood piece rather than a message piece.  If a message was intended, blame my density or carelessness for missing it.

In general, there are a lot of good short phrases which conduce to striking images.  I did not find a clear return to the title - for what is addiction exchanged?  Insecurity?  Value (as in money for the dose)?  Exchange sanity for solace?  The pusher's addiction to cash and bling exchanged for product?

But I did enjoy it, an exciting ride without dwelling on the danger.  Sorry this is not a very actionable critique.

Duke,

Thanks for the read and the notes.  If there's a message, I don't know what it is.  I wrote it as though it was being dictated to me by someone else.  I know how that must sound.

I was thinking of starting a thread in Poetry Discussions about whether a writer should understand their own poem(s).  Three very perceptive people have read it (you are number 3) and had similar comments.  I would like it to say something.  But right now, it's all mood and not much else I think.

TqB