In each vault: a fifty pound note—
How fragile our consciousness must be!
From each well: an overflow of oil,
Gently trickling into the village's stream.
For all their wealth, no sons to be seen;
No daughters frolicking across the effervescent green.
Only weapons adorn their mantlepiece.
No pictures of family. No memories amassed.
No records for spiritual esteem.

From outside, inwards,
Each one screams from within
And plays such sweet melodies.
Masks— of all shapes and sizes—
Beckon us to sing!
Rising from their jars, as snakes do,
When the snake charmer begins.

I never saw the scarp begin,
Nor the haunted planes of gold;
Forlorn, I watched the waves move in—
How their snow-laden peaks enfold!
And without the call of tri-formed reefs—
Echoing: mosaic-to-mosaic shore—
I would not have seen the heart therein,
Nor the light henceforth bestowed.

And opposite,
In the electricity fields,
Sit rows of hollowed-out shells.

Now in-land,
Though out of place,
The Lightning Whelks generate Hell.

And parallel—
Conducting phantasmagorical light—
The pylons coil around them:

Reverberations from the industrial fields
Where the blood lines coagulate and dwell.

And the blood lines—
They feed the hollowed-out shells—
Form conglomerate veins.

And in their hands—
The great fires they weld—
Ever-surging, moth-coaxing light.

For the set-foot-on new-found sand,
We set sail from mosaic to mosaic shore—
Our black slave-belly churning, evermore.

In the distance we saw a strange, ominous dome.
So dense it seemed,
As if crafted from molten slick!
As if crfated from an accumulated Earth-spit.
As if fashioned from one complete object.
Clearly crafted and fashioned by Futurity's hand;
He who strove upwards and did not question what He saw as progression.
Futurity: He who would compel me to free my stock of black slaves once we reached this sequestered clump of land,
For these isles seemed no place for men with torn and shackled hands.
For these isles seemed a place where shackled slaves would free themselves and feed on their master's bone strands.

As we walked through the old church, once more,
We saw little Andoni was there, sitting scared,
Asking us: "have you forgotten our prayer?"
He was angry and very square.

In the corner,
Shrouded by smoke,
Odilon Redon was there.
He watched on with an exalted air.

So we carried little Andoni to the aqueduct
And we sat in the aqueduct, square.
And we sat in the aqueduct until midnight,
Where we had first conceived of our prayer.

"Once he is within our custody, we shall take his life. He shall be, henceforth, survived only by the image that stains my CCTV screen."


Security is no longer watching the CCTV.
No longer watching someone purchase a rice pouch—
Pulsating in a sterile environment—
Monitoring an image that was never on tape.
Focusing, so deeply, on a soul that was never on tape.

So deeply fixated on those who have committed a crime.
Those who are substantially unblemished by sunlight.
Those who are continuously touched by our Heavenly Father's sight.
Those who unceasingly scale onyx towers draped in a government skin,
Waving pure flags against the night.