A semiotic web tendrils of another spider’s fingers of silk infiltrated, this is a grave, a sacred space two competing gods fate with insurmountable odds against which the ribbed cages of our hearts rattle and shake enraged, embittered things embattled by double-speak and over-think, two breaths in one chest cavernous as a cathedral without a seat or treasury for one gem to keep from being seen, meaning obliterates itself here, offs all opportunity to be understood by anyone else who might seek rest and end up sleepless as we

are trapped here, imprisoned by indecision, kings have abdicated for less, disrobed for mistresses clothed in worthlessness, dethroned for princes much more appreciative of how aggressively emptiness oppresses those whose needs its appearance diminishes, vacancy an asset to him for whom waste accompanies all riches, every orphaned son a spendthrift of his own torments, capitalizing on loneliness, what bigger asses have left unsettled, but how we accept this, our lot, two arbiters of excessive thought turned presbyters of a gospel which advocates for a tabernacle with two altars, fed

up with being set up by what others brush off, every detail, every possibility part of our scrutiny we ritualize until the paralysis of analysis causes any reaction to be rendered impossible, useless toil, this wedding is not mine, this is our shared house, this cell we circle with devout trot, eremitical twinned Polycarps toeing the same lines, the ellipses of these vesicæ piscium non-stop but never twice, as Heraclitus had it, no one experiences a river the way another or oneself might, nor ever together, for the flow

undertowing our pull from the light is this folly of ours to find in our flight to these occulted corners of our minds a perverse delight, yours might prefer the scent of blood but the sacrifice I offer the higher power of my personal genius is incense rolled from the Tree of Life, leaves I scrawl with scars I mark not with a knife but a snarl, more alive when I howl, more empowered by the magical, burning all turmoil and tumult left over after our rumination’s enervating ritual.