i. Drawing the Tables

As pathos kisses minds and fills blank paper,
     rapacious traitors of talented angels
     in threadbare fatigues and burnt cakes of blackface
     ape minstrels, deserting heaven’s battlefield
     for another war’s theatre to play in,
     smug and confident as emancipated
     panthers, their vagrant chorus of pale lips lays
          on thick its indecipherable language

of wails, filter-less cigarette hisses and
     garbled molasses drifts of gnarled tobacco
     spit, I wake to their summons of hits, clouded
     by surround sound visions of celestial
     exiles banging with banjo-blistered finger-
     tips on my window’s faint lustre, dirtying
     my own “eccentricity’s” latest purchase,
          Doctor John Dee’s old obsidian shewstone,

hewn from Aztec minerals of Renaissance
     provenance, this polished glass transistor no
     serious seeker of wisdom can resist,
     her suitors possessed of more than wonder’s mere
     acquisition, but a wondrous mirror by
     which an adept, and adroit, magus can speak
     to things such as these wingèd beasts filthying
          it with painful and patterned patter, their canned

                    ii. Conversing with the Angels

laughter and hollow praise staining its lacquered
     centuries of confused attempts at proper
     usage, and astonished breath, with cobwebbed ga(u)ze
     of thin talk, not rust or ancient wisdom, but
     mischief’s probable cause, knocking with callous(ed)
     fists from the smoke-filled abyss (t)his big black disc,
     pounding this onyx oculus from its wall,
          unsolicited celebration sounding

alarm with riotous and defiant song
     breaking forth through their audience’s fourth wall,
     as legions armed with stringed instruments peer in,
     pouring on my patience audible floods fire
     works with televisionary diligence
     to scorch, without remorse, through my eyes and ears
     piercing tears of crystal, clawing candlesticks
          this band of starry messengers brandishes,

as its tongues of flame lick from wax cylinders
     voices sorcerers of the past trapped, records
     trashed as efforts to measure their arrival’s
     damage surpasses mathematics, logic
     falls flaccid in the bawdy count, their transit
     more forsaken than simple evocation,
     elephantine and crashing angels take from
          ritual its rhythm, quaking to new life

                    iii. Making the Adamical Accessible

magic both Enochian and Goëtic,
     together consummating with chaos, v(o)ice
     wedding v(o)ice shatters at sight of its tainted
     reflection my shewstone, pieces of reason
     crashing, as spirituous flickers collect
     science as collateral for this marching
     bang’s formless æther’s fatalist attraction,
          these kohl-eyed angels the latest players cast,

in costumes of crumbling clay, to portray prayers
     in salvation’s delayed parade of myth- and
     myrr(t)h-makers, souls answerable to no one,
     conjured conmen shaping the raw ore of earth’s
     mortal thoughts they mine, imitators of those
     whose pierced bones scrape clean from this rock, flesh of lies
     left thereon by honest cries, petitions plied
          in desperate venture to have realized

visions of better wor(l)ds, and perfect li(v)es, none
     can touch or revive, scrying no more than art
     and hope colliding on a shining surface
     where concerts of conviction, and misplaced faith,
     perform miracles our hearts otherwise can(’t)
     make: that thrice-greatest, most-sacred mystery
     of salvation no longer celebrated
          but solved—since we create its effect and cause.