Abstraction
the greatest truths I’ve found are
that god is a ladybird in disguise
Hades will remain mute to my protests
after the apocalypse I must nail
meaning down through inscape
the choice to go on living arrives
when I feel vertigo over a cliff
the sound of immanence can be heard
as the rain blitzkriegs my glass
one meaning of martyr is to bear witness
when I save a snail on the pavement
I save humanity
at least Christ only had one crucifixion
I need a ghost in the machine
science is just a line of paradigms
I need my black swans and white crows
my words must serve as a requiem
love is beyond Aristotle’s categories
all these are variations on a theme
A Distant Fawn
Off in the glades, a fawn crouches, hears its own
heartbeat, a wolf upwind. & still a whole field
killed by lightning. Orphans search for mother’s
scent, before their heads sprout into branches.
Was it God in disguise?—the fawn at Darsham
Marshes. Ghost-like, going off. It seemed to say
I’m here, don’t follow. By the trees we glimpsed
a whorl of fur, receding further as we stepped.
My lips on your forehead. I was a fawn in your
limbus. I was going off, going off in the distance.
Night Sea Journey
It seems you’ve left me floating in the Sea of Cortez.
Left with after-effects, torso upturned to the stars.
My bed surrounded by a carpet, the ocean’s depths,
I wonder from where the light of dreams emanates,
how shadows are cast in the cortex. Other realities
are as close as your jugular vein. So says the Koran.
On the verge of jumping after you, what stops me?
I’ve made an altar, placed trigger objects—amulets
to amplify the residual, the mind an aerial.
I’ve burnt incense, switched devices to record …
By the morning sun, the lounge is transfigured. I listen
for raps, hear floorboards expand, often a distant siren
or the sound a mother makes after the death of a child.