O winking aperture gasping at noon,
          O assassination of assassinations,
          O killer with a silent needle threading smiles

                    i.

into still films framing events without
pause, god stitching together in the midst of their
crippling predicaments fallen stars whose hardships

follow the course of our anticipation from
the chaos of which you embroider every
stitch of what we since call constellations,

fate’s relentless censor without filter
casting off in every direction guiltless
associations, creator jettisoning

                    ii.

reminiscences and aspersions your flicker
scatters from whitest heaven into the greyest
indifferent atmosphere and throughout

the doubting environs of a fading
dissipating civilization, I summon
courage only to dismiss it, to do away

with my defiance before inclining my ear
to yours, if together we bend, then together
we can listen, perhaps you can tell me

                    iii.

what it is I have been trying not to
say whenever I phrase things as poems instead
of statements, answering my own soul’s questions with

verbose prose I versify and bend into forms
never intended by the troubadours who first
developed them to be put to use for

such ends, and when and where does this end, this
mouthing of mine along with no one else but you,
knowing you are not even my friend, and that your

                    iv.

words are suspect, why do I put my trust in them,
and what is the significance of this vision
I keep having, this digression in which

I find nothing more significant than
a new way to waste paper on saying nothing,
is this why I feel so troubled, envy of my

coin’s other side, a king wealthiest when never
satisfied, always wanting to see in your tide’s
rising vindication for my drowning,

                    v.

aspiring to be someone other than
who I am when all I can think about is how
I am always becoming but never can see

my Self done, silver perfected at the end of
some old alchemical process I am only
ever always going to have lost or

just begun, when will I know if I have
won, is this why I write, to fill the vacancy
I want for my life to occupy, tell me, am

                    vi.

I even qualified to be a candidate
or like a pen does the ink of ideas have
a time limit before it dries, which is

why no matter how high we set our sights,
ambition always gets a cap put on it, cut
off like an interviewer before his question

can be answered by a celebrity filling
in for a deity? O chimæra of twelve
faces, do not deny the hours your light.