Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.
          —Mk 13:31¹

                    *

I have written the same thing again and again since. This will seem little to you with your strong practical sense, for it takes fifty years for a poet’s weapons to influence the issue.
          —Yeats²

                    i.

Black drips, molasses-thick riches
conquests molest deserts to grip
in fists twisting filth to dollars
politics get in bed with, oil

fossilized jaws uproar, spit flame
paining from protests what poets
paint, staining over all complaints
its exploitation’s toll takes, toils

toward oblivion with no grace,
bests practice with performance blasts
of hot light splinter sand to glass,
bomb drops of manufactured wars

choreographed fights ghost forces
go all out to buy and bolster

                    ii.

amoral supporters for this
raw deal’s realization, not
one headline real or horror worth
fearing more than too numbed to feel

for a moment what the other
side of the world feels while we bitch
about not getting what we want
when we want it, guile haunting soil

spineless guilt wanders, blind maggots
whining until fissures crack smiles
and hell swallows tomorrow, let’s
hollow out this planet, holler

through its marrow how idols lost
their lustre when idle hands for

                    iii.

just one more poke stroked relentless
the golden calf so senseless those
tablets Moses broke he ignored
himself just to covet her spoils,

milking mimicry of god’s voice
to cover up how angels rushed
the job when, sent by Elohim
to gather dust to form primal

Adam’s vessel, they visited
every other orb before
slacking off on Earth, here where those
immortal jerks FUBAR’d it hard,

let crumble apart those wretchèd
slipshod, potsherd bones of his dark-

                    iv.

hearted Lilith straddled, stitches
lashed by whips in the skin ripping
under attrition’s burden, whore-
kisses of lives misspent like nails

letting in her evil ever
since, so darkly-mattered, tragic,
and darkly-humorous, we’re shit
mixed up in this nonesuch anthill

together, devils too clueless,
un-Apollo-getic, and sore,
useless tools too uncertain of
what salvation Scripture offers,

what ancient history’s use is,
what memory’s even meant for,

                    v.

why one’s experience isn’t
the best school, we’re illiterate
degenerates too unsure, our
Selves our souls’ cells which never will

open for apotheosis,
will-power and self-control left
ignored, like self-knowledge, keywords
forbidden in this world for all

those of us too cool to resist
temptation’s call and aspire just
a bit higher than going this
low just to get so high, far more

into substances than substance,
a sordid imbalance of worse,

                    vi.

poorly-sourced ingredients, death’s
midsummer breath sent backward west,
tanning sultry with sin’s rapt, scorch-
warped brand this weakest leather foiled

flesh she’s beaten and bitten, through
which the queen of the demons has
been chewing, getting even, hate’s
heat eating us, wasting us, ’til

nothing’s left, before Genesis,
before he even divorced her,
before she parted for Eve’s quick
arrival, her influence poured

on Adam still swarms in our thick
seed it forever swims, its cure

                    vii.

cheating men out of more than just
a rib, more than just a tip, this
revelation’s bitter pill, sure
that man contains traces that kill,

the same exact elements used
to make the vaster planets whose
superior inhabitants’
eyes are old Titans’ balls, awful

marbles rolling in their perfect
orbits, bold terrific forces
laughing at us for being this
weak and so terrible, so scarred,

so mortal, so feeble, still wet
and fśtal, fatal and under-

                    viii.

whelming, unable to deal with
what we’ve been dealt, to heal yet to
fullness of health what we’ve wrecked, for
after all of this oceans will

be the new borders, and how far
before then, before the end’s depth
deluges us oblivion’s
penance, can we sink below bile

before we learn to swim, forgive
one another’s debts, invest in
acceptance as we were instead
of those appearances wished for

shooting all those stars we forget
we still are, how long, friends, before

          we begin believing again?

__________
¹“The Gospel According to Mark”, [Chapter] 13[, Verse] 31, in “The New Covenant Commonly Called the New Testament of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ: New Revised Standard Version” of The Holy Bible: containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books: New Revised Standard Version, published at New York by Oxford University Press in 1989; page 51.
²W. B. Yeats to Ethel Mannin, 6 April 1936, in The Letters of W. B. Yeats: Edited by Allan Wade, published at London by Rupert Hart-Davis in 1954; page 851.