so flush with jaded gods
I heard this said:
The literati live here.
Take your handful
of popular culture
and bury it elsewhere.
So I strode from world to world –
the planets fleeing beneath my feet.
I took the pain that I found
in the streets I walked
and made it mine.
But still I stumble in expectation
of something worthwhile
beyond the lids of closed eyes.
Here find a testament to my failure.
Those I never touched with a syllable.
Don’t mock me.
I was baptized in a cesspool
bloodied by half-formed bodies
of those who never came.
But in my song I remain young and hale.
Like a marionette multiplied
by the tension of its strings
I sing for you. I do.
Profane gods speak of
the belly of a cloud on fire.
And I see that, too.
My right eye is the sun
and my left the star of evening.
When I ask for light
a kerosene lamp sheds
its violence across rows
of open mouths.
How can you believe in a life
tamped down into
the dimensions
of an ordinary cube?
I will break the six walls
that hold my bones tight.
Will you come with me?
