i.

                    *

Language is a shattered mirror.
Laughter splattered on what appears
as we all damn ourselves in Art
to save our Selves in Life! Let scar

us each a fast reputation’s
blackening only solitude
survives. What mercy was done it
has done everyone ill. Spilled

opinioned into a free-willed
Chimæric thing wingèd thick with
miasmic, acrid breath, incensed.
Anthropomorphized offering

                    * *

of failures our refusal to
learn truth from suffering becomes.
Talpa-thing thought into being,
imagined flesh wounds fed until

beleaguered breathless. Consequenced
with contractual death. Brushed dust
indebted to us and no one
else for its rust’s depiction of

nothingness. Tranquil, blank, unchecked.
Servitor assassin tasked with
trashing evidence of just how
unspectacular being formed

                    * * *

mortal really is. Flawed into
an angel, cracked collateral
monolith destined to crash next
after questioning at last its

artifice of existence. Swept
hard once harvested into dark,
unrevisited memory.
Buried, starfished, splintered fragments

immediately severed from
Vitruvian flex to a mess
of an amateur disaster.
An artist’s poor attempt at worse:

                    * * * *

mastering depicting a war’s,
or slaughter’s dismembered pieces,
none of which grow back, no caption’s
description can touch. Tentacled

quick to full stop. No untangling
of electric messages from
a multiparous corpse spark-rich.
Flickering resurrective this

cursive itch to which its twitching
parts have no recourse, not yet. So
much for your technological
advancement, progress is a myth.

          A joke the woke punchline of which
          only machines get and we are,
          yes, unfortunate. Writhing wires
          cut to sizzling cords, in a word:

                    ii.

                    *

sculpted oblivious except
for what breath we breathed into it.
This beastly egregore of filth’s
tarnished wealth armed with a tongue of

sword, carrying toward hoped-for
futures another winter’s worth
suffocating season of bad
investments. Of abandoned work,

of jettisoned efforts. Of failed
alchemies our enemy sun-
down unenlightenment’s doubt snuffed
out. An appalling pox of foul

                    * *

rumours harvested by its pull.
This forked tongue-roll of barbarous
words reduced to harsh syllables
from bent lips to oblivion

strewn downhill. A second Fall, as
Adamic and perpetual,
unrepentant, as from a spent,
crumbling heaven from out of its

broken columns pour obscene leaves.
Pornographic oracles, texts
analogous to an ancient
smut-rag’s looked-over articles.

                    * * *

Magus-iconoclassicist
magazines bleeding these tawdry
prophecies, mockeries of sought
miracles penned impenitent

by hairy palms anonymously.
Glib, unedited polemics
masquerading as poetry.
Purloined verse purporting to be

sage words unfurled in desperate
attempt to comprehend what then
happens to them when to good men,
better than this, their prayers return

                    * * * *

with curses for answers. Poor jest
blaspheming all sense, when belief
perverts itself. Promiscuous
missives betwixt naughty monks and

corrupt hierophants, a scarlet
scorch of immoral letters melts,
fells Christian soldiers. Filling bones
with aching indifference, those

fragile scrolls fragrant pregnant with
every scent bursting but that
of sanctity or remorse. Ink
breaking faith as though to keep it

          kept sealed, one’s reeking terror of
          soul-eating disbelief fleeting
          devotion concealed at church each
          week. A release of weakening,

                    iii.

                    *

a grieving dispensation of
agreeing complacency for
experiencing conundrum
in silence. For once, worshipping

an echo rewards one, repeats
acknowledging desire, causes
its experience to exist,
to manifest. A benefit

befitting repetition lived
enough until its wish distills
a fought-for pattern of awful
fulfillment yearning this much for

                    * *

accomplishes. Murmurs its cry’s
mimicry until a broken
heart useless as a valentine
emerges hollow as an urn

one finds after a tomb has been
pillaged by robbers of graves whose
fight it has been to steal to stay
alive. Their hearts harder than rock,

steeled by fears absent as they mock-
descend to enter what realm crime
can only pretend to describe.
Here where hearts lie shattered. Bent shields,

                    * * *

untranslatable fragments, charred
tablets no taste can find worth their
waste of time to mine to surface
and versify. Honour into

perfectly metrical lines of
poetry only scholars and
our culture’s unsung, underpaid
professionals buy. Shelved volumes

no one else’s eyes will ever
sight. A bruised legacy of warped
gold, within the contoured foil of
its bruised folds fallen apples tears

                    * * * *

oil, aglint of burnished dawn’s flash.
Mottled brass, globules rebels dropped
before man was formed, pearled jewels
whose alignments their fate paints with

purposes as they constellate
shapes into omens. Holes throwing
open to interpretation
their unveiling these glistening

seeds perform once. Hanging against
dusk’s blanket each zodiacal
cycle. Inscribed shells gathered twice
a night when anticipated

          right, along a twilit path’s thread
          aligned 69° East,
          at the most secret end of which
          a corner or patch, a grotto

                    iv.

                    *

or grove, overgrown with tendrils
of shadow every seeker
knows. Where things that never heal act
as totems, as amuletic

artifacts living enough that
those of old who have passed before
us reconnect. Spirits bless flesh
with its fetish for fact skeptics

mistake for fancy, that magic
solitude attracts. This octave’s
loxodrome played to its laying
out in one’s mind a seam stitching

                    * *

together Time and Space through which
Orion’s eye peeks as he, too,
rises. A meeting of two kinds
hemisphering Then and Now down

into one Northern place this gate
this night, followed, allows to be
traced by clocks’ hands against fading
Reality’s face the Hour of

the Sun on its Day. Nine forty-
five, post meridiem, rather
quarter-to-ten. Sunday the right
time to summon him, the Headless

                    * * *

One religion condemns. But this
is ritual, routine rich with
real intent, action rendered more
spiritual. Not some by-rote

recital of memorized text
the meaning of which none even
remembers now, no, sir. Not since
becoming ignorant became

gospel. Surviving revival
attempted by a spooning out
of soiled sighs, patchouli-scented
knives of musk, hunter’s green velvet

                    * * * *

to the touch. Decay envious
of the fading flourishing on
which its fluorescence thrives. In
an opened mouth is planted what

blows closed others’ minds. Laid inside
a dead metaphor an author’s
tempestuous reflexive self-
talk revives. We are either who

we, or who we let another,
write! A tongue in its bite turning
over, riven with bitterness,
its translation stinging into

          being a song someone else’s
          irreverence for speaking lifts.
          Treats of the untreatable, sings
          things even sacrilege blesses!