I have nothing.
I am spent.
At last nothing is left.
Only the halcyon waves
And boundless, unknown shores.
My limbs spike with rime.
They fall away helplessly,
Unheeded into the abyss.
At the dark depths
Where civilizations lie creeping
My left arm plants a sign
Among the appendages heaping
With a forefinger pointed toward me
At the surface where I float
Sleeping.
If I remembered how to write
I’d write you a poem,
A wish upon a memento mori,
To burn the pages of our story.
Where were you
when I lost my glory?
I’d seal our love with tongues of flame
Fed on vapors of a snuffed phoenix.
To rise from death again then die
In eternity’s dream-
My only hope for lifelong sovereignty.
Well, swell’s the bell
And spring’s the flory,
‘Tis my reason’s fledged and hoary.
In this hell we dwell and dwell
Amid bygone knells of yester-yorey.
When we were young
And I was old
Before earth’s great flame had burned us cold,
Before life’s long years
Were bought or sold,
Your face was peace,
And Your body, mine,
To hold again and feel you shine.
When daybreak’s bright joy
Stumbled over me yesterday
And the mourn before,
Where were you?
Though age has passed
The truth has yielded nothing.
I sleep alone at night with your memory,
A wish upon a dying star.
Here I sit at the end of the world.
My head is gone, I cannot write
without lungfuls of words
since the uncanny welcomed me
days ago.
What is this thing? I say
I saw
behind my eyes, imprinted on their
vision like a fabric of throbbing germs?
Behind my eyes, the bestial monstrosity,
the writhing ball of tangled meat.
I draw what I see everywhere I look,
Even where I don’t.
A fleeting picture.
I’m on safari in the Serengeti
sketching plains as they pass me by.
Mutate, pulse, consume, produce-
I’m in the forest but the picture remains.
Now there are two, neither, but now one.
Layer, I overlay. The one follows the other,
Together they are both, neither, and one.
Shift, another, a black shining sun,
Thrice produce, consume, one then none.
Layer, I overlay, a new vision’s begun,
Produce, consume, one and then none.
Because you’re near to me
we play the game of love and hate.
I degrade you as I engulf you.
We smile secretly behind the masks of our faces.
Your words, how they pierce,
what fire, what passion, propels them?
We touch, intertwine, acknowledge the play,
as sickled sighs part ways
affinity struggles through us like dust in water.
We will meet again.
We believe in justice, in the even weighing of scales.
Vaulted chapels, fluted columns,
The marvel of man’s sustained history
inscribed upon stone edifice and weathering millennia
but for the kiss of wind.
And what is destiny
if not an encyclopedia of footnotes?
Layer, I overlay. The one follows the other.
Together they are both, neither, and one.
A love, a myth, a truth well-spun-
Produce, consume, one and then none.
Reflections of the Machine 