Four poems

• I.Sound and Fury

Don’t read the signs

They don’t say a thing

The cold neon flashing

There wants your mind

You reside in shadow

They silently shout

But you slide on out

Also silently, and forgo

The darkness and cold

Moved towards the fire

By instinctual desire

Disregarding what you’re told.

Words are magic,

Are sound and smoke

(Really a trick)

And you would choke

If you dared stay

In that cool cave

Open a door

And then go, brave

Through those strange lands

For which you have

Forever longed

Burst into song

And words at last

Surrender, still

• II.Interpretatio

The ships in the harbor

Are steered by little winged feet

Through liquid silver.

The eagle nesting on the cliff

Watches climbers, children, and tanners

More than too closely.

(But who can judge

But the golden Sun above?)

No one minds the woman

Emerging from the ocean

As if she were just born.

Thunder grumbles in the distance

To assert that it still

Rules that place

And could wipe them all out.

But the climber on the rocks goes on,

Watched by the eagle

Who swoops down toward him

As a stag leaps out of the forest

Under the full, silver Moon

And the Earth trembles violently

Leaving seahorses

Washed up on the shore.

• III.The Swarm

You generally can’t separate sheep from goats

Battleships always travel together

To stop from crumbling like foil

Skydivers are jumping near your location

(So hope for the best)

Bread and circuses take every form but bread and circuses

And the applause splits the Earth

As people instinctively

Nudge each other

To keep them mechanically clapping

Members of the genus homo

Gather by and leave fraternity and sorority houses

Like birds migrating, noisily

“This is flocking behavior, right?”

Someone asks you,

As you stand invisible to the forming herd

The Furor is absolutely real

And all your pores grow wide

The whole world grows pores

And black insects fly out

As if from a honeycomb

Nymphs and satyrs run through the park

Like marionettes and try

To get you to dance

As if that’s all they wanted

All the world melts

And you flow down the stream

Then you melt,

Nothing more

But silently-cackling sparks

In Stygian blue

From the cloud-cave above

With a battle-cry

You erode all

That still remains

• IV.Alchemy/Affinity

It’s been a long time

Entranced in the night,

Restlessly, but who

Needs rest

In solitude

And all the things

You thought you knew

Meet up

With the shores of oblivion

And all you can think of

Chemistry, color

The unattainable

Like the taste of all the poisons

No one thinks about

Yet still surround them

And what the Sun looks like

In fine detail

And what it’d feel like

Not to breathe

For twenty minutes

But you’re not a mystic

So you move from that

To this

To that

And stop between

Isn’t it good that you’ve had ideas

And not even realized it then?

Yeah, and the night sinks deeper

(As if you noticed)

As you sink into that bed

You don’t even notice the flickering patterns

Because you’ve sunk yet further

And you’re on that bridge between

The thing and its idea

Like the left and the right,

And can’t fall down again

This is where magic is mastered

But you still walk out, despite all this

As if unchanged

And gaze on the unreachable object

Of all your desire

If that’s reached,

Then what’s left?