Distinction is introduced only in hypostatic being which, as if repeating itself in a multitude of different I’s, is individualized by them at the same time.
          —Bulgakov¹

                    i.

Willows who cannot weep, indiscreet creeping
things bearded with insects, worms with
wings too willing to bend over
our own reflections and drink, we
are broken trees beaten bittersweet eating
shade, glass cracking beneath satin, tears
fading to a stain, a mess
of lessons repeating like a rifle
that rain lives only to fall,
ink runs from a nude moon’s
full lips across god’s foggy lens,

          dips a tongue of mist in

the crevices of which white-hot stars
swim to scrub-off at once their
cool and scars, an auteur of
misdirection lording over his best boy
making history ever since her cameo
appearance in the crucifixion split the
screen, tore the veil, and divided
audiences, pulling into focus a distant
Eden all of us lost, asking
was it the cherubim or some
company-man centurion armed with a pen

          spinning this ending killing-off the Adam

within, reducing him to an apple
only some have? Calligraphy eclipses future
worries with burning memories its unseen
hand drips from heaven, descends under
the bark we unleash along paths
unknown to us, saps into the
veins a charge changing the leaves,
merely hints at inscrutable motives, turns
like a blade of grain in
the gunmetal-grey bones of gutted wood
from an indistinct shape into palpable

          pain articulating itself by way of

burrowed speech, heat leaking incandescent throbs
of Rorschach hearts that no pornographic
passion can rub-off, plots testing us
with dissonance twisting out of columns
of smoke, choking into flat lines
undercarriages of rhythm stuck in a
roundabout uprooted troubadours circumambulate as they
play-out, over-and-over, an exodus they cannot
pause, shrapnel fruit thrown from our
war against conceding to our own
self-doubt defeating us as it tours

                    ii.

the diamond route of monastic throats,
bombastic as it is tragic, this
call of the mystic to Cutter
away the name the way librarians
reduce all knowledge to numbers, remnant
letters withholding from scholars of the
ætheric the place where readers become
authors, saving the date, dusky colours
offset the tipping of illustrative plates,
tripping over Babel’s heights cooling their
tongues in heat, we are what

          we seek, wisdom’s withered seeds lynched

in a blazing orchard by a
dry-spell of attention-starved fiends, quills quivering,
shivering petals of innocence shed as
if this were going against nature,
and controversy’s premature winter had no
use for peach-cheeked finches pinched pink,
blushing at the thought that scandal
might be beneficial, the final catalyst
which inspires kids to think, flying-off-the-handle
a method of igniting to full
flight the phœnix wings of angels

          who have fallen asleep, bruising in

the church of a turning season
whatever is left of the flesh
of our fading reputations, denigrating without
hesitation this flagrant fame of ours
for being so degrading, a storm
takes a bite, sobering wind swallowing
a month as a verb Octobering
both of us from setting our
sights on imbalanced horizons to languishing
as temptation’s reticent scorpions, weathering beside
my Self next to you, a

          new definition rushes in with a

hunger’s higher purpose, runs along paths
unknown to us, ashes of ancestors
mixing with shame before hitting the
stone of cold pavement, raking-up the
kohl of smouldering bones, genetic relics
of minor saints and major fakes
who give-up the ghost but not
the game, bullets fly-by, miss-the-point, and
I feel fine not-yet-hypostatized, ignoring their
criticism I hear you whispering magicians
are engineers of coincidence, participants with

                    iii.

god in nature as its co-creators,
co-conspirators with spirits glyphing the process
of bringing about the apocalypse, this
is not so clear-cut as creation
was, we cannot reason our way
out of it once willed by
the mind of something superior into
being, no fire negotiates with a
forest, the wolf is at the
door and we are fuel for
the beasts at his table, the

          war is within, full disclosure: this

is psyops with three eyes open,
disinformation throwing legs of journeys akimbo,
forking enlightenment’s roads with all signs
crossed-out, the inquisition redacting with the
black of night its own answers,
what truths intuition imprints on the
soul as if it were a
memo, classifying what defies categorization, what
distinguishes you and me from flesh-covered
kindling, no oracle or portent worth
knowing if one cannot know oneself,

          do not be a ghost, I

will find you, without showing it
my desire will twist like a
carpenter’s pliers the constriction of this
construction paper armour along paths unknown
to us until we are no
longer governed by tyrant hirelings, no
longer reliant on amateur gardeners scissoring
from this hedge its amazement, imposters
aspiring to acquire wealth they are
not worth, dirt returning to earth
in silence, condemned to serve what

          they once worked, we are sentient,

sentinel things, knights never seen, always
heard, heralding our slow rebirth as
words without uttering but only ever
thinking them, taking Gabriel and Michæl
as our patrons we are guardians
of a strange heritage, the marriage
of annunication and revelation, messengers of
our own making blurring the distinction
between transmission and reception, living symbols
of divine intelligence designing with diligence
a path back to our origin.

__________
¹Sergius Bulgakov, “Chapter 2: The Guardian Angel” in Jacob’s Ladder: On Angels: Translated and with an Introduction by Thomas Allan Smith, published at Grand Rapids, Michigan by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company in 2010; page 41.