Never dream of empires, my dozing ones.
Cool yourselves in the bureaucracy
of my gray eyes.
There is no need to break
the codes of birds, nor lose yourselves
in the black and yellow monologue.
All that I see, composed and still,
is decomposing riot.
The sky is a malignant wheel.
And below, a bit of subhuman
twitching, nothing more.
Prick, protest, and perpetuate,
while the sky spins, heedless.
Why such anemia, such surrender?
Surely no delphic depth
attaches to these words;
to say that maggots tunnel out
the rotting cat;
that sacred texts go up in smoke;
to call a spade a spade?
Only the criminal is left
with secrets unrevealed.
The rest make do with lies, half-
truths, and poetry.
There is, in short, no comfort to be had
in musing on the dim supposed glories
of the species.
Nor shame.
Nor wonder.
So be still. Though not with the stillness
of anticipated joy, nor ill-concealed
dread …. Be still. Not
as in ‘contemplative’,
but as in ‘dead’.
Ha! Cheer up or bugger off,
half-horse sailors!
gee pallas wee hope none?
Hope?
Nope.
Mice scatter, back-shattering owls
fall like lead across your puppy-dreams.
Too shrewd to make amends,
defuse normality’s shocking zeal
with a mad disguise or pretend
it’s getting better.
Bitter numbskull subterfuge, that.
Queen of cynics, goddess of intelligence,
why should I command a regiment of slaves?
Willful mockeries my rare, my blasphemous
tribute?
I do not command,
and dare not signify.
I see only the blind,
conducting swine past pearls,
negotiating the truffle field
where some Judas shakes her bones.
And if all my centaurs
are made sissy,
where must I go
for my fine chastisement?
Is there none will lend assent
to my belief in
the efficacy of this? … The
belabored obvious?
off to a bad start, pallas-
pet begin again, please
Yes yes yes yes yes.
Tread wary on the line of bronze dust:
empire’s spine tickled beneath agate toes.
Wind parades the mountainside,
sighs down in a field of
comfortable poppy.
Wind lifts like a queen’s skirt
and settles over a court of adoring
cunnies.
From hills and hawk-quick knolls,
the stunned tocsin of a sand and sea
conspiracy,
hatched and nursed
in dry somnambulant air,
to swarm the minor green
with unnumbered gray and yellow.
The wind expires in an incest of breezes,
caressing the wires behind transparent eyes,
the light a shrill electric gold.
Underwater, a snare drum snaps and trembles like a loosened pane,
its counterpoint a flight of fattened doves,
quarried in a glass palace.
Better?
much
What is it with you hoofers:
preferring obscure sentiment
to obscure invective?
we be tired of riddles
either way love
but if we must choose, pallas
make it nice
leave off the drubbing
the nonstop thumbing your
nose at saviors cartographers
and other single-minded swarmers,
it takes all kinds to make
A world?
Not mine, it doesn’t!
don’t it?
No!
Nor will I be
swayed, seduced, or spanieled
by see-through ecumenical
pandoras!
be lonely then
Truth was ever thus.
(dreary tease)
Pardon?!
dearie please
reconsider
end upbeat?
And plow the sentimental
field? Never!
then
yes?
then, pallas
yes? yes?
THEN PALLAS BE DAMNED!