12-Sided Abyss

718

My selfprolonging impersonation
acquired a force of preordained assassination
it was humiliation, separation and sustained by fallacy
there was a pretense of final equilibrium but
witnesses all came with variations,
their circumstances artificial,
Their outrage concealed.

A violation of existence may have occurred.
An organism interrupted
In its successful imitation
Of inevitable depreciation.

In the end I was conscious
Of sentimental reflection
And intangibility.

719

Approximately kissed by the sun
Silence became visible.
The Islands of virtue
amid these stars were places where
Apathy was explored and
futility was celebrated.

Midnight, you came in on a wave of inanity
and burned your vessels in stupid triumph.
The yellow furrows of asses,
Inhabitable by steady conquest,
Left these pilgrims mute and lethargic.

720

Daedalus is limited
his story of Aeronautical performance
Eclipsed by tragic modification.
Witnesses mentioned there were
streamers of flowers
And celebrations by the survivor.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi

Eumaeus 640

Heart, will you still be possible

when yesterday is suddenly missed?

will you always astound somehow, speak

and falling like some profligate star

like years of duty, so wedded to a piece of affection?

Heart, so elder and such the

travelling eye leading you fondly through

the weeks and years you

speak of trains in the night

of age and life

and see the best lies

in all your neglected arguments

Eumaeus 641

The suffering of common animals

is often misunderstood

the dog remembers the spoil as well

as the mistake

he has not years but only this neglected moment

only conclusion and causes

his faith is often sorely strained

and cruelty is an incurable event

approaching a mistake

he risks conclusion in order

to be cured of reason

his idea of fate

is an idea of water,

it will not hold him from departure.

Eumaeus 642

eventually, God became a cynic

its pessimism beckoned

accompanied by all those beautiful

chambers of fate

it was left shaking in the vicinity of home

standing near a shanty in Blarney

with a revolver in its overcoat

feeling the pleasure of it in its hands

thinking a plan of blood

sailing on a sea of grass

failed calculations in its frozen marrow

becalmed in these silent years

Second Person Plural

Eumaeus 623

so you bring your foreign committees

your launched disturbed sentries

you leave with your fortune intact

but humanity left behind

over, over this brief space

when we describe the invisible

the tolerable wrecks that

easily tether us

rather out of close improvement

and all this evidence of noise

we are watchers we

composing knowers of fate

and we find our footholds

in sleep.

Eumaeus 624

a lord comes in forms of agreement

disguised in brass and toy hat

chanting a song of increase a

surplus of watery success

but we do not regain

all the sunken countries

the crescendo of air

instead the steam of night

pays down

and we find ourselves falling

through the market of history.

Eumaeus 625

The years depend on a bit of doing

they extend so privately gem-like

and advise tidings and signs

of simple circum-navigation

the tarpaulins that cover our lost sisters

are wishes for land.  There are also

jumpers who have a chance to do it all over,

then jump again, anyway

would they try to land

in the place of their birth?

we are lost in the explanation of all these fools.

An Old Man Is But A Paltry Thing*

Euameus 620

herding the coincidence

with these giants, killing time

knee-deep in bullshit artists

hacks and cramped con-men

what was that thing that

reminded us of mariners? Oh

yeah, it was in our hands

the thing that lied while it

gave names to the gospels of melodrama

in a quiet mind you may

describe yourself as a straightened

resident of imagination

a bowl-legged poet in love with spelling

an inventor of crimes meant to pass as probabilities

Eumaeus 621

In the eye of night

we fall through the ice

it is the shape of our want

the splendid blood and

the number of our days

we pass under the sun

forgetting to mention it

even in the museum of the unmistakable touch

we confuse phantoms for fish

and a fish for a shoe

we are washed in the waves

of the beautiful shore where

we harvest triangles for

the listeners of reason

(For Gerry Dubuque)

Eumaeus 622

heavily slowly piously passing

working the wrecks of

the splashers of viruses

and makers of rain

marking the sailor's last visits

on the courses of the temporary

this morning is cured by

composing committees and

and cleansing our limbs of

all that's amazing

we wait at the bay

as it easily lies to the water

watchers of horses, we

sing of our time in

this brief space of day

*"...An old man is but a paltry thing, a
tattered coat on a stick,...."

W.B. Yeats - Sailing To Byzantium