Laestrygonians Arrive

Link to Website update, September 28, 2009

149

Hanging iron in Zion
The rivergod sells its only daughter
And uses the dough to
Celebrate Yom Kippur in style.
Atonement never comes cheap.
Soon, a washed-up Elijah arrives and starts breaking the furniture
The hand of the king is still
But theology of night is unmoved by
This confession, its hymen bloodless, intact.
The poor increase in number daily
The stain of the failed savior a welcome relief
From all those slow wars.
From all those empty years.

150

The looking fool
The stale poet
Dead drunk trying to find a rhyme with night
Coming out with other things
Flittering with reverence but not quite knowing why
Only recently realizing itself a penny-pinching spirit
Hungry, dull out of time.
Famished it watches the waters, underfed,
Waiting for the bread it knows must soon arrive
Until foolishness floats by seeking some farther altar.
Tell me, again, the meaning of your faith.

151

Hands of God
Shake what crumbs unexpected down
To the river of wonder
Then, clapping, make the salty sea.
Flying by night the dancing fish
Grow feet and continue to answer to
The surely rising masters of the water.

A rowboat at anchor, many gulls calls forth
A disease of belief,
Beyond here, there be giants.

152

The priests of the morning
Bring only ordinary words
Then greek rocks to be used against
That empty horse- too late
The false curiosity that is always
Bringing them to ruin reducing
Them to simple letters
Lagging, drunk, in the gutter
Not thinking to ask the real question:
Where are you going?