THE DEEP

Like flower on a wedding
cake…sifted, muted, bleached
to the bone. Stands before
the great doorway of Time, hinged
with muted stars that sing,
rockets out of the open void
that may or may not be sin.
To dance with sweat and fervor
in the great nothing, to lie
in wait and breathe and sigh…this
we offer with jackals and tuning
forks…heart of dust…let us dance
the merry way we used to,
in Spring or Summer of that
forgotten year, in heat of many
happy faces with gold-weight rhyme.
The dying happens each minute
of that dance. Let us pray.
In heat of standing ruin we may
speak indelicately, coughing and bleeding
dusted with fragments of
leathery grief. In Springtime.
What was it we forgot?
Those breaths of humor, that
sweet music that never was,
flash in the pan of misery
and old wood…Colossus of old
in the fairy castle sleeps…sharp-winged
dusk wanes over the nightmare village
…and I can't see, and I won't see.
The Now is all it ever was,
and it is fading, fading…Apollo with his
burning face, Diana with sickening arrows
…the Deep is wider, through all of our mourning.
Check the clock.
There are vacant echoes approaching,
invisible friends…when I cut off
my hair I'll take a few pictures,
affix them to my wall. Surrounded myself.
The columns blister in the darkening sun.
Dryness.
Heat.
And that old, old dark.

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