Exiles In the Land of Kakistocracy

I.  A Conversation in the Time of Galamatias:

Our salad days are filled with bitter herbs and intractable roots —
Not so much a salad, but a melange
Of weeds and thistles —
Indelicate things in our mouths.

Every bite a mouthful of rot and offal —
Awful offal.

The kakistocracy is installed in the cupboards
The cups are off on a two week vacation in Wuhan.
We are mystified and malnourished.

Now I’ve had my wine…
And you look better than you did twenty minutes ago.

And you say:
The sky is a massive hole tonight —
My precious lucida is eating the universe:
Inside-out.

I can lay down and go to sleep.

The lights are receding
And the darkness is strangely pleasing.

II.  The Death of Tane:

Then there was the sickness —
So hot.

The vault of heaven darker —
Then darker —
A black sun —
At end.

It was succeeded by the shadow
Of the shadow —
Spreading —
Nearer and nearer to the pin prick
Of light —
Destroyed.

To the west—
distant—
A white effluent
Soft and yielding
Bounds off.

III.  Passage:

Crossing guards cane a woman.
She stopped traffic —
She wore a mask
She needed a cuddle —
She shook —
She hollered:
“You there, take this…”
Her eyes closed.

The wind appeared pink.

“Your mother buggered 
little boys and girls!”

“She’s a ghost,”
My mother said —

“Alone —”
As she squeezed my neck.

“Goodbye,” I cried.

IV.  Coulrophobia In The Land Kakistocracy:

Clowns are spotted in the Carolina gloaming —
Clowns with knives at the edges
Of dark woods.

I met an old man who loved
A woman who —
In whispers —
Had recently died.

He recounted his harrowing nights
Raising his hands at
An unfamiliar country.

Without spotting an actual person —
He spent lonely days
Encircled by clowns —
And a stranger…
We can not discuss.

Painful moments in our pockets.

I saw groups staring up —
Untethered —
Lost —
Exiles.

They looked small in comparison with
This Curious Refraction.

V.  A Violent Force:

Corybantic priests run —
Amuck through prickly weeds —
Bloody hands full of entrails
Chased by their sacrificial lambs and
Headless corpses —
With empty chest cavities —
Whose names were not happily chosen.

Among the monticules of ashes —
Lie dismembered heads
Mouths stuffed with testicles.

And the stranger —
Bright and Barren —
Grows stronger —
Triumphant.

“With God dead, there remains only history and power.”
— Albert Camus