The Earth Was Feverish And Did Shake; Statement By The Poet Announcing The Use Of Boundaries For Joy by Paul Edward Cost

THE EARTH WAS FEVERISH AND DID SHAKE

That would be the day

if, as the Scottish Play states,

real leaders gone astray

have to face how far they’ve fallen

through increasingly deranged

displays of pathetic fallacy,

ones which plainly say

how the world’s balance

has been displaced

where the king’s horses

break free of their stables

and eat one another on the night of his murder.

Deciding society’s path

would be easier

with similarly explicit,

hideously misaligned signs of nature

appearing alongside

a nation’s soul

at each stage of its downfall.

Maybe rabbits will stretch falcons

over torture racks they’ve constructed

out of sticks and woven leaf stems

should figureheads align with vile players

using nihilistic hate as their prayer.

For now, we can at least begin

by opening windows

and filling evenings

with lamentings

and strange screams of death again.

STATEMENT BY THE POET ANNOUNCING THE USE OF BOUNDARIES FOR THEIR JOY

I hallucinate a world

where pursuing happiness

results in respected paths

                allowed peace,

where it needn’t be followed

by pleading requests

to please stay back

and dire warnings

       of how interference

       will result in the rapid

       and complete obliteration

       of every intrusive enterprise

       jealousy has above ground.

I only wish

I didn’t have to compose these words

                              and set them down.