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
