the automatons! they dance! pure limb-for-limb mimicry
their composite flesh not yet lonesome for death
but why should it be when they move so feverishly?
i guess that's why the french call it 'divertissement.'

and though they saw the sun today
they thought it was an illusion;
if not for the, the sky-turned-grey
they'd still be dancing now.

tossing and turning, the drones cannot sleep:
fear has invaded their worn circuitry.
fighting off nausea, conceding defeat
all disavow their past pageantry.

and when they try to dance, aligned
they find their steps amiss.
they sleep at night, but curse the days
that decadence has won.

awake in the morning with a handful of faith
to a shower of confetti in the wake of a parade
where the children scream for candy and the youngbloods swig gin
as the elders watch clouds pass, forgetting their sins.
it's another new day; let the pageantry begin.

said virtue to vice, "i am an innocent man."
to which vice replied, "i see blood on your hands,
and i can sense the mountain of carefully-laid plans
whose lofty ends drowned in seas of circumstance."

subject to object: "i brought you to bear."
object objected: "i really don't care,
for i am the great, dead world and god is my nom de guerre;
my blessed body circumscribes the designs you would have me wear."

subject to virtue: "what thinks you of all this, my guiding light?"
virtue in earnest: "you won't be needing me or my brother, vice."
subject, denial: "but there must be something you can do?"
and vice, with pleasure: "not against the objects!"
subject, despondent: "so i'm suppressed by this dead world?"
object, sardonic: "dominated is a better word."

gear up, soldiers. we're off to war.
two blessed virgins stare from disparate shores.
pawns have come to litter the beach
as each glowing godsent spits a stump speech.
the first virgin cries, "breed! just breed!
the pagans are coming! it's numbers we need!"
hoping to spite theotokos
head-birthed athena proposes a toast:
"here's to the prophet who birthed from his head
a real saviour— the old god is dead!"

this is a pregnancy pact.
and all the troops who made the trek sing, "this is a pregnancy pact!"
all the veterans left at home: "this is a pregnancy pact!"
at the parthenon, they're screaming, "this is a pregnancy pact!"
from the walls of the vatican in rome: "this is a pregnancy pact!"
panting, rabid, and flushed with a lust for war,
the faithful flood the fields.

numbly fucking, drunk off fear—
newborns strewn across the plains—
they breed in the name of sweet,
sweet saint mary's missionary.
the greeks cough blood through the night,
orating in favour of sleep,
weaks limbs waving, voices cast
into the cacophony.

amidst the downpour of semen, spit, and blood
as bodies expire, their "love" rages on, flailing;
and on, fighting; and on, fading; and on, silence...

good god.

up on the transcendent clouds of history
the tired scribes and their brides slept fitfully
dreaming of time's crimes and man's divide
from the myopia of his memories;
their dreams were fraught with the fear
of failing voices in the long-since-forgotten throats
of their brothers, who, in their innocence,
wished eternity upon the lines they wrote
in songs and melodies so vain
that none but the king of the sun
danced to the music they made,
his self-pity displaced.

the petty fears the years evoked
aligned them with their destiny:
to be the kings of all until
the separation of leaf from tree.

their dreams returned them to the day
they watched their library burn down
bringing back that sense of loss so crushing,
that loss of hope so profound,
that when they woke to find the day
they saw in the shadows they cast
an absence they couldn't escape;
death hanging in their wake.

the drifting ashes choked with smoke
implied to them their destiny:
to be the kings of nowhere when
the leaf takes its course from the tree.

leaves from the trees.

as leaves from the trees fell the scribes and their history;
an honest forecast called for the clouds to dissipate,
so they just faded away.

i am haunted at night in the streets of anywhere
but find myself listless in my throes of terror.
with pride comes fear of that which we have repressed;
dream-stalked, gun cocked, feigning strength nonetheless.

"what a dream!"
yeah.

i'd run but i'm trapped by the sister of death.
there's no escaping these things i'd rather forget:
the dogs, the dead, the moat well-fed.
the dogs. the dead. oh god!

i am taunted at night. enemies of foreign flesh
bear down with guile and malice about their breath.
i've tried in vain to fight these macabre visions
but once sun meets street, i'm wholly victim.

i swim the moat to the manner of tortured redress
past the pale and floating, acquiescent.
mother, father, why the water?
mother! father! please!

i would dive back in the water again.
"you've never seen the dead! you've never seen the dead!"
i dive back in the water again and feast upon the dead
like a pack of feral fucking dogs.
the dogs? they dig for my lungs.
as they tear at my flesh with insatiable claws, i scream:
hey predator! "yeah?"
fuck you! "fuck you!"
hey pride! "yeah?"
fuck you too.

"hey there, young fiend— what do i say?"
once you hit bone wipe the blood off your face?
"i should think so. it's all in good taste.
when you dig for the heart, don't let the entrails go to waste.
i admit, i eat meat—" you feast upon prey.
"i'm just an avenger fighting decay."

"this decay, it creeps through flesh, baring bone.
we waste away, and our legacy will be debated
as to the battles we've won and lost
against the slow rot of time;
against the flight of the sun,
our fragile bodies come undone."

"stitch by stitch, seam by seam, time makes us pay.
vultures eat vegans out on the highway—
children hide under their desks and they pray
as bullets ravage classrooms, as the sun dusks the day."

"who bursts across the scene of open fire?
the overarching father time.
his swinging arms offer no reprieve;
one more god to deify.
hey, plastic, hanging mock sun!
count down that fate we can't outrun."

deep in my heart of hearts, i guess you'd call it guilt.
"call it a labour of love." i call it death from above.
"circumstance is a lesson in chance." the heartbeat, a ritual dance?
"call the timepiece a brazen image—" the tick-tock clock life's blood—
"'cause time will drain us drip by drip unless we commence with the flood."

let the headlines read today:
"child killed by runaway taxi; driver flees the scene."
and as he flees the scene, let the headlines really mean:
are you a vigilante, or do you indulge in tragedy?
as your eyes scour the page, and look into the frame of lens
that caught the morbidity of that sombre scene
are you looking for escape, or to live vicariously
through the shocked gaze of the spectators in the street?

our eyes like keyholes on thresholds we just can't cross;
watched and watching, we long for crowded rooms to placate the loss.

we were there the night the princess di'ed
we watched camus fade away
and i swear we've never felt so alive
as when they brought out the body bags.

apollo! patron saint! i need you and your muses to explain:
i am told that the poems don't love us anymore
but who really gives a flying fuck?
"the teething youth and poor man's truth with whom
rhyme and metaphor still resonate and bear fruit
though it's so ripe it's to the point of rotten— that's who."

can these brave recruits
save this sinking ship?
"there's not a hope in hell."
i just hope they can swim.
"they sing aboard the ship:"

"'i was left trampled in the streets of bull-ravaged pamplona.
fucked beyond belief, i came up spitting poetry.
my brother lied down dead in a cold hospital bed
but i made his spirit rise and want to celebrate it.'"

they can sing all they want, but the dead won't dance to their petty songs.
"come on now." don't you see? i blame them for the cynics
spitting blood from the cheap seats— with dicks in hand—
who understand that everyone in the theatre is getting off to the show.
"imagine that! you were like them too, you know?
don't forget those lines you wrote:"

"'i am the last ragged breath that dances through your body singing
"the war is over! the war is over!" to the newly-martyred dead.
i fucked the afterlife to see if she was really right for me
poor girl was terrified; her fear went unrequited.'"

apollo, please. just listen to the poets pray:
"dear god! save us from this surely-sinking ship!"

"that's just coward's talk. it's a bloody shame—
after such a storm of hostility—
to be so caught up in your sympathy
for the poets drowning in defeat."
no, dear god, it's not what it seems to be.
they've been floating there through the centuries
fighting off fatigue and depravity
while their god gambles with the fates.
"as their limbs get tired and lose urgency
they will gasp for breath, come to taste the sea
and slowly slip under—"
'till human voices wake them and they rise.
but they will rise.

all we ever hear is silence when all we ever speak are words.

"and so we were thrown in that godawful fray
tangled in fabric spitstrewn with dreams
drawn across landscapes, stretched out in pieces
left pressed into the yawning fold of morning, noon, or night;
a fleet chase through a wet, angry, dream.
we fought on for days, singing praises for our weaponry
woke up drugged from the haze of spent gunpowder.
these limbs were young agents, but the landscape wasn't watching
was sighing between handshakes of aversion through ground teeth.
the familiar, distracting, an if/when in the wake of the now
close friend buried in the soild of us all.
'you're in no mood for talking (asleep.)'
so we told ourselves, left hope haning in the town square—
there was nowhere else to put it— thinking,
'everyone needs to sleep sometime.'
everyone needs to sleep?
no trains were forthcoming, still we stood on the side of the tracks:
if only that harvest would yield. if only that tide would turn.
it was the infinite mercy of nothingness;
she would sing to us in our dreams
and let us lick the salt off her absent body.
blessed siren inciting our tepid thirst.
and then there was the fever, piqued.
no escape from the weight of the climb.
the patient forebearers were handing out fates:
'here's to the lucky ones: brave in defeat
but no better than we.
their last sweet nothings a chorus without end,
'the end... ' the end, repeating.
decrescendo to whisper.
we sleep.

(mylipsarelickedwetwithliesmytonguesablackfactory
believeingodsodidiuntiltheageofthirteen
nomatterhowhardittrycantseemtosaywhatimean
theytellmethisisthepriceofpostmodernity
andthoughmymouthsopenedwidenomeaningescapesmyteeth
onlyhalfhearteddenialsthatihavediedinmysleep
myhandscannotreachtheskytheyfallsomewhereinbetween
iminthefightofmylifewithdecayandgravity
thoughitsamatteroftimetherearestillmomentsimweak
wheniwishhewasalivesoicouldstaveoffdefeat
andlethimtalkmetosleepiminamoodtobelieve.)"

like an arctic fox too fucked to stalk
the tundra lies to us beneath our feet
(the snow geese fly just out of reach.)
or icarus, his wings sun-kissed:
waxing wings, we take to the sky
but we're blinded by god (or the sun in our eyes.)
we're the whitely-bled as they carry the dead
we stagger with the weight of war
bomb-drunk and balance-poor;
and it's a strange way to dance.

our ever-reaching hands and that they hoped to grasp
separated by the lines that divide our voices from laugh tracks.

like a violent plague— la plus nouvelle vague—
we storm the mouths of the innocent
breaking teeth with abandon.
shining long-dead stars, still-burning avatars
exciting the songs of their hollow chests
as we sing them to death.
we're a martyred man with a nail through each hand:
we suffer, strung up for our father's pride
hanging spread-eagle to prove we've been victimized.

now, with due solemnity, let's all self-eulogize:
shipwrecked sailors left behind with blistered hands stretched out in vain
our dreams live on but won't survive the shoreline or the tide's embrace.
her arms, so salty, will sting the wounds sustained in the storm.

"what a sin!"

albatross wingspan, a weight we can't stand, hung from our tired necks.
those who've mined the river will never forget its flow.
debritage caught in a branch downstream;
the bird and the burden bastardized in effigy.

sisyphus is pushing rock, lover left abandoned;
back breaking ascension, it's dulling the shine of the eyes.
forced back down to the water, bowed in defeat again
a pale reflection his only reward for carrying the tide.

these, the things we carry: bearing more than we.
sepia stains, every motion— shadows drawn adrift—
infants torn from the womb by a midwife/mistress.
knelt in prayer in the shallows, hands cupped,
sieving water, searching for gone, longing for lost
carrying the weight of a thousand empty shells.