For my late father, Ioannes Carolus, slain patriarch of the House of Bordenius, for having finally arrived, after much tumult and tempestuous time, at a place in my mind where the flame of my heart ignites the spark of peace, where together we will always reside, forever be treasured, kept as all secrets are, alive so often as thought of, at once whole and halved, two sides of the same coin, wealthier for having survived the unkindest slanders of this world, ignored wagging tongues waging war on us, indentured to serve eternity’s teeth, to be eaten in death as in life, tormented, forested, wildernessed, tortured without witness, wander abysses restless, lest we speak with loose lips what dripped honey eager ears of strangers lift, pilfer only to misinterpret, what a crime rumour inspires, what a triumph immortality is, better sooner than later than never to have paid the ferryman for his unenviable endeavour, tasked with a soul’s transfer from one vessel to another, from one world to the other, for I carry on your work, our burden, ever since you crossed over to that shore our ancestors all rowed toward before we were born, warrior beasts of Bordens whose truths I record and honour for future sons and daughters whose dawns are arriving on the horizons of brighter tomorrows more luminous than our own were—

                    *

For you are I, and I am you; your name is mine, and mine is yours. For I am your image[, your lineage, your legacy; you are my heritage, my origin, my family]. If something should happen to me during this year or this month or this day or this hour, it will happen to the great god[, it will happen to you.] Your true name has been inscribed on the sacred stele in the shrine[…]where your birth is.
          —PGM VIII, 35–45¹

                    i. 49° 11′ 38.508” N, 123° 58′ 38.028” W

How can one not be moved by what time
records, what its passage cannot undo, what its truth
asks of those who pursue its course? Damask irreversible,
dusk’s veil covers dawn’s route, curtains the portal, occults
any chance of going forward without looking back, no

     been-there-done-that to pass-off this chance as an eclipsed disk

of ink bowls closed the sky’s vault, holds close
sparks of flint-scratched pucks, captures the goal of all
stars, to catch fire, to render twilit all grottoes,
obscures all oaths tendered, swerves through sworn ever-afters if
only just to have the last laugh, darkens with

     its darkness, collapses breath into wind, tousles beards of

moss on which willows hang their tears, pillows of
plump earth plowed through by powerful pillars of prayer
or choruses of curse, whichever tears a last ditch
toward oblivion, paths a patch of shattered gasps with
more questions than answers can ask attention for, starves

                    ii. 25 May 2010

certainty until possibility hungers for more probability than reason
can afford, fingertips trip as toes do, go over
grooves lichens linger in as moss mosaics grey to
green, emerald clover covers with paws of soft clothes
graven letters nude no more, trace cursive paths in

     furtive stone, flourishes to full fluorescence bulbs of night-coloured

words, gloves and shoes foregone to hold close this
cold root monuments prove bone their six feet into
scorched earth below, hold together with sinews of scarred
art and heavy architecture a forgetfulness of impending rot,
beneath me you scold whoever burned your corpse and

     dusted its ash into soil, mixed flesh with filth,

ransomed existence for this turmoil my pilgrimage to your
tomb succors, to secure memory a borrowed burrow, your
mother’s own, again in the womb you abhorred, forever
to be smothered, so I pray, not for the
same fate, but to liberate us both from this

                    iii. Homicide: Multiple Perforating Gunshot Wounds of Chest and Abdomen (Gunshot Wounds Inflicted by Another Person)

grave’s mouth, to save you in death from that
umbilical noose of which Cobain keened, of which sang
the hangman’s grip on the throat, of your escape
from which I sing again and again in my
own prison of short sentences my renaissance of baroque

     eloquence extends, executing second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh,

and seemingly infinite chances as your errant son, bewitched
and bewitching heir apparent to your seemingly endless benison,
foregoing as you did his coming rope which, in
life, the way you so cunningly spoke, spared you
its breaking of a neck so often you stuck

     out it could not be broken, not as cutting

as the way you so often joked, always on-the-ball,
ribald, all ebullient and personified charm, you lived as
you thought, acted as you ought, with your balls,
and ever up-against-the-wall, always running-for-the-gate, how you made it,
even if late, always in time, if not on

                    iv. Injury at 1530 Hours PDT (2230 Hours UTC)

it, to make my days, and so I aim
as I write, not of what can be divided,
but what fight within us unites, combines chaos and
light, endears, to our defiance enduring strength, for you
are my blood, I am your flesh, your legacy

     in this life as you are mine in the

next, never will I love more anybody else at
once more imperfect and more full of courage than
you were, our connection’s cellular, supernova Scotians, bursting forth
beyond our tethers to places far better, wireless firestarters,
I am, and together we still are, apostles of

     that lawlessness nature enforces, for your little Arthur’s earned

that card he pulled, King of Swords, learned hard
the wisdom to be read on every ancient stone
so he’s now a Merlin, his own person, will
of iron, indefatigably confident, wit vitriolic, acerbic, and volatile,
a sorcerer whose poetical work purges hurt and makes

                    v. Death at 1556 Hours PDT (2256 Hours UTC)

more potent every reader these verses transforms, strangers each
scrawl reaches and warns, yes, the boy’s joy is
to teach others as you taught him, to be
reborn, so as I wander this field of cairns,
dragons’ teeth by mourning sown, these resolute herms and

     plinths each a lone terminus demarcating boundaries between solitary

worlds, in the liminal treads a leper shepherd whose
disreputable Arcadia scapegoats and blacksheep such as we return
to when scorned, for in the arms of those
for whom their ignored before performs in perpetuity its
lore forlorn Ianus faces us now, Bifrons embracing alike

     derelict pariahs and their arrogant scions, and which man

we choose to greet is the one on whom
we can count, depend on never letting us down,
for when a son sets his mind on something,
such as I have, dad, he never relents until
what he gets benefits those who never doubted him.

__________
¹“PGM VIII. 1–63: Binding love spell of Astrapsoukos”, translated by Edward N. O’Neil in The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation: Including the Demotic Spells: Edited by Hans Dieter Betz: Second Edition, published at Chicago by The University of Chicago Press in 2011; page 146.