Aspersions

Promises flow in all directions,

appointments are not kept;

heavy snow fell through the long glowing night;

by morning it was all swept.

Winds tell the bricks and panes,

cries of cold meat curled up

on the cardboard sheets,

come and see these hunger artists, museums of innocence on the streets.

Unsure steps follow each other

and patterns repeat on the floor;

it is the hour of Satan and the time of spirits

for hungry ghosts unable to sleep.

There is enough material now, good bits of learning,

someone was at it for a long time, unbeknownst to me.

Split in two, we look at each other like strangers,

broken tokens of a single self; ruptured fragments of my very soul.

Who learns while I remain unmoved,

unstricken by the terror, un-listening to the cries?

Will all the investment and hopes of civilization

be sunken that were so ardently professed in me?

Cynicism, that parasite of curious predicaments,

festers unabated, feeding on itself;

Why take anything seriously

when you can laugh it off as a joke?

Everybody is corrupt, goes the common refrain,

and I look away from corruption in my bones.

Once these musings are ended,

will I then be satisfied, at least content?

Having drunk so much of this world,

will I wake fulfilled, not needing to repent?

Showers, behold! Of meteors, how many have we missed?

Cloistered in our prisons and hazed by tungsten mist!

Surely by now we must have had enough of this dazzle and long for the dark...

Soft embrace of earth and cease the beating of this heart.

I count the people as they become shadows,

blown up to pieces and burnt down to coal,

smeared with asphalt and devoured by the bugs.

Horror unfolds away from the tragedies...

In our land, shadows pronounce diktats

And men observe silent wakes.

Morning moves over upon us like seas at high tide,

there is no fat wood in the hearth, no spark left to ignite…

Likening myself to the stones or pretending to be some one, some thing,

I doubt my station, cast aspersions on my being.