The wax melted 
               and though I burned and burned 
                          I did not die.   
What is he who survives destruction — 
                                a spectre flickering thru life 
                           ephemeral, indefinite, 
                                    a moth that flew into a flame 
                    but which, after burning, remained. 

            I walk the earth like some ghost 
            carrying its remnants …  

When those who bury themselves above ground 
                 continue living 
                                   as if still alive 
       they are but a simulacrum of life. 

            To breathe, eat, sleep, and congregate 
            as if no pulse beats within —  

              the collapse of time 
                     t e n s i o n   lost 
                     thread cut                 
a n d   unraveling thru space-time                  
like a shattered meteor 
         throughout a ’verse 
unsure to which galaxy it belongs 
                a misplaced species 
its last evolutionary step 
NOT TAKEN 

            bone to bone 
            even breath is dis/cordant 
           a frequency lost 
                     in an ocean

Median 

Is it only a median, 
some interstice of no determinacy,
or an as of yet unforeseen meridian,
darkly pregnant with a rich horizon
whose burgeoning is but obscure? 

What of this scattered debris, 
this life become disparate flotsam,
the force of decades 
splintered through infinity 
like houses obliterated by tornadoes —
existence swiftly pulverized … 

memory, history, roots 
each divested of their ground 
as if gravity  
suddenly ceased 
to function — 

coral is loosened from ocean depths
planets plummet out and beyond
then ricochet through the cosmos 

the sun plunges into the sea 
its light and heat extinguished
now no longer sun 
just cold stone 

the sea and its flora & fauna  
spit thru space 
like detritus ejected 
from black holes 
each fish a fossil void of record 

day no longer 
night gone 
stars unharnessed & pale 
all brightness absent 
all passions spent 
a final darkness 
a final light 

riverbeds crack & twist 
the earth beneath
like metal tourniquets 
splintering bone 

bread, olive, and oil 
bereft of their binding stuff 
microbe, cell, and atom 
no longer here to fathom 

no muscle, sinew, or bone 
no vein or breath 
no organ pulses 
thus no rhythm, vibration, or sound:
a silence greater than the silence of space —
even the Pythagorean spheres resound no more 

Pascal knew no such terror 
nor Hölderlin in his tower 
nor Nietzsche on his terrace 
nor Borges in his darkness 

What of Radnóti and Celan, 
what of Crane and Luca’s watery descent,
what of Mayakovski & Esenin, 
what of the khurbn, 
or Lorca as the bullet pierced his skull,
what of Pasolini in Ostia? 

Marsyan martyrs 
flayed like goats for sacrifice. 

What Baudelaire said about roast poets was but a prophecy 
of every Marsyan atrocity 
for the myth is true 
& every tyrant dons the mask of Apollo
to silence the dreaded musick of tomorrow —
discord, triumph, and strife 
sound in the shrieking wind; 
each shifting plate 
vertebrae breaking beneath our broken feet
earthquake, storm, and drum 
sound no thunder 
howl, earth, howl — 
this world is done

Vapor 

If I leap into Etna 
there will be no body to bury, 
no last word to betray, 
only evaporated DNA. 

No one will suffer  
being unable to honor  
an implacable will, 
the force of life 
pressing beyond death, 
a living holograph 
effectuating an ethic 
too strenuous to sustain 
over the slack-willed string 
of quotidian regimen. 
Detuned, most go on, 
devoid of exacting creed. 

Who can sound the composition
that every great will demands; who ascend to the gift of death,
or endure its vivid test? 
When life is complete, 
the living weep, 
but the dead only do so 
when their will suffers defeat. 

At this dark kairos,  
hemispheres align; 
tested by their force, 
the living struggle  
to redress the calumny 
of every arcing arrow 
whose flight was broken, 
its sharp-pitched intensity 
too fearsome for the placid vectors of a cautious polis 
that knows not danger’s bonheur. 

Where does the driving arrow land?
Broken open, what tomorrow
lies await, an undiscovered star
whose burning light radiates. 
The tempest of the cosmos is within us.

Winter 2018