Come, nihilistic compulsion,
Come, bitter bottom of the glass,
Come, looking like a bitter ***,
Come, solipsistic mirror!

I have seen you rise a thousand times
And seen you, wise, with wiser rhymes
Arise with wild eyes frightened, high,
Suspended on a riser over night.

Full-faced, without the spatter
Mattering, disgraced distasteful
Patter, battered, left to fry
Inside a lake of fire.

Stained. Unchanged. I've faced you.
Cast your gaze upon unblessed night,
Your desecration burning bright,
Reflected rays directed -

But I chase you. I'll outpace you,
Race you down to where the emptiness
Can scrape the chalk dust off the slate.

I scrape and scratch and can't erase you.

I can't write without you and I don't know
Why I doubt you and I can't say much
About the way your touch, so sweet and mean,
Coats me with gasoline. I can't ignite

Without you and I
Lose my light without
You, empty night so bright
With rays I recognize
Comprise you.

the firmament of heaven
will vouchsafe each celestial light
save one

when dusk steals it all again
leaving those forlorn stars so far away
and us down here in the dark

i will turn my weary eyes to you
the blessed candle-flame of you
and know your light despite the night

to ache for death
like a hole drilled in a tooth
like the rot set in, waiting for truth
to scrub out the gangrene and rot

like remains from an empty shell, like the fouling after the primer's strike,
like the war cry after the speaker's voice
finds a live mike

and everything falls short.
The finish line runs away.
How sweet it is
To be left behind.

High truth for a high court?
Ha! I'd like to see it
Down here, where the doubting
Dowsers and diviners
Give away their gifted
Gimlet bits of wisdom,
Scraping for escape and
Scared of what they're saying.

Dream a little dream of
Dreary hours, sleeping,
Finding where the fire
Fries a firefly like
Loving something lovely
Loves yourself inside it
'Til the timer's ticking
Tells you you're done cooking.

How could I spend myself, seed, root, and gardener,
To someday look up and see the tree grown from me?
This is a vital self-deception, a delusion of choice,
Less a plea and more a deliverance.
Who should carry me forward through history?
What shoulders ought to bear the weight of
This ponderous name, this mouthful of dirt?
What could ever have grown in this garden
But weeds and thorns and bitter poison?
In this fulgurite waste, stricken by some God,
There's no hope but the barrel of His gun.
What monster could feed this to a child?
Better an ever-fallow field than a compost grave.

What could we do, but
Reach out and defy rapture
As the light took us?
Come the fire, come what remains,
Our dust will be together.

Now I have seen divinity
In clearings wide as all the sky,
All grassy green and riotous:
Long blades a-rattling, aimed at Heaven,
Warring with an unseen wind.

And I have seen futility
As plain as winter's frosty breath,
Where fields of green gave way to death
And skies of blue surrendered, too,
Wrapped up, abandoned in a white tomb.

They'll muster up for war again
When Spring trips in to dance and sin
As if their bellicose endeavors
Ever had a snowball's chance.

And here is Hell, their every movement
Sisyphus against the rock -
Each blade of pristine imperfection
Dances by the wind's design.