august 2021
(i)
...can words really reshape the air
or replace humankind with a dream
or even this universe with a single vitreous eye
whose glances always become flesh
who then can honestly expound the truth
that wildest essence of all things
for there is a seam of quartz
which carries the imagination
and a vein of silver the heart
trust, they say, is an unimaginable gift
and so it is
because beneath these mountains
words are being hewn out
by beings without eyes
pages and pages of salt
that seize upon the dreaming mind
a pantomime, a circus
an applauding world
this seam of gold
running through the walls
the unspoken essence of all things...
(ii)
...what birds are these that sip illusions
from the eyes of ghosts
their beaks always open
reaching for the moon’s opioid blood
this flightless erudition
this endless wittering
that merely pushes the grotesque
from screen to screen
from one likeness to the next
this brave, mono-syllabled world
and I, the scarecrow, just stand here
in this empty field
my heart stuffed with rags
watching infanticide
phantoms, birds, blood moons
my feet stuck to the ground
stuck to this cheap deception
that I am still doing what I can
to taste the truth
through the mud and straw
that fills my mouth...
(iii)
...and then came this hominid
caught in the cross-wires of some apotheosis
its knife-edged supremacy
a world swimming in semen
this cortex, this pith
that has never sincerely known itself
for in the falling hush of rain
there has always been
a strange benediction
an incomprehensible narrative
of how these supernumerary light-years
never let go of the heart
or lose sight of the cross-wires
those knives that shape the universe
this hominid, this inseminating angel, this wasp
caught in the act of apotheosis
splitting rocks, biting trees
closing slowly on the trigger
that moment when even the gods look away
and supremacy explodes...