“Seizures Break the Silences”

“Seizures Break the Silences”

Seizures break the silences, then arrest all prayer. Godly fear’s
—Some short breath of eternity—alone can pace
The soul in such moments through the lights of suns, with time and place
Within a mirror traced, as Medusa to her Perseus, aglow, disgraced,
Displaced, and finally erased as sacrifice on this side of the glass. A mirror
May view so great a riddle in as prophesy and reap such gifts
As this in seconds in the shift
From what was once alive, yet etched in steam and even now is tears,
From what was from eternity now fearing now
Evoking strings in trebles, threats of eruptions set
To give us gentles back above what now must lie below. He hears it yet
As some sweet adverb’s antecedent, an oblong irony allowed:
Shahada for the masses, then, The Lord’s Prayer fully grown:
Herein lies all there is to truth, and certitude is all that’s known.

“The Innuendo”

The innuendo woven not so much in the fantastic,
But in experience, a living witness within a precocious cloud,
A view to forward motion, counterfeit because in itself it is allowed
To be but never adequately traced: inertia has no station; static, elastic,
Yes, but to no greater purpose.  These, the chords of oneness in righteous bond
Cannot be but bastard confirmations of the spirit’s sparse but potent
Progress, motion, goal’s, the irritating “now” but well beyond the quotient
Of “then again…..” But there’s not it. There is no special wand
Nor spirit guiding, none the precious gift beyond simple accident in bands
Of language, maudlin to the ear which is to say we may embrace not knowledge, but the inordinate love of what the ear may be gifted to hear;
We may glory in what the tongue speaks, and its wonders to suspend the fear
Of dwelling on the absolute, mere ciphers written ingloriously on the sand.
And if, by chance, there is a point to these sentiments and if pernicious—these
Fine words—it is the soul and not the author, penned such thoughts with ease. 

“Indentured Servants Everywhere”

“Indentured Servants Everywhere”

Indentured servants everywhere: the card’s
Been pressed, the digits electronically addressed or etched
Upon the forehead; ratings flourish, revisions texted
In shifts, then, quietly to less than nothing with no regard
For authenticity in means. The gears are greased enough―
Or so they say―but this one has wizened information
On the wing; those, the stormy petrels’ trusted affirmations,
Give him pause to guess at little more than mild revision, tough
Decisions, restrictions on the overdraft, tight transactions
By the width of flower stalls set close upon the street of walls—
The Babylonian solution—aplomb applied in torrents. Danger calls
And no one’s learned enough to savour satisfaction
In the twist of something greater than the shining bait:
For every bear a natural end; bulls, vainglory soon, and ignominy late.

“Allegories”

“Allegories”

Allegories of the people ordain mere distractions and survive
The shared and ampler avalanche. Zeitgeists in the light of compromise
Through ages bleed to epochs and thicken in the rhyme
And cadence of the bounder; all is measured, finding strength in ties
Of mutual conceits and sentiments patterned and designed
To clear the balance sheets, embellish columns in the ledger
Bound in leather while practitioners mumble golden mantras: “Together
We’ll survive; our blood is blue and bonded, resigned
To fire as might—our gods continue to survive!” Just so, perhaps.
Substances that people traffic through the veins
Are indeed both grief and loss to happenstance that reigns
Reliquaries of the shaman
drain the humble shepherd’s cup of sap—
The blood of lightless suns—and fill the same from acrid rains.
Imagine, then, a people petrified in joy and wholly sheltered from pain.

…painting by Stephen W. Douglas…