All the flowers of the spring
Meet to perfume our burying;
These have but their growing prime,
And man does flourish but his time:
Survey our progress from our birth—
We are set, we grow, we turn to earth.
Courts adieu, and all delights,
All bewitching appetites!
Sweetest breath and clearest eye
Like perfumes go out and die;
And consequently this is done
As shadows wait upon the sun.
Vain the ambition of kings
Who seek by trophies and dead things
To leave a living name behind,
And weave but nets to catch the wind.

I love you, as a saint
with an aureole of gleaming autumn-burnt hair
an ecstatic shining and bright as the sun,
spilling forth with holy oil
with the face of a white-rose angel from Botticelli's brush,
with the heart of a tar-black demon, a serpent in the fiery bush,
a heavy pink blossom all dripping with honey
a sinuous and serpentine moth-silk scarf, fluttering in the summer air.

and I love you, loving and knowing that
I love you, as a painter
loves a streaked and bright tempura paint
here, sun-kissed as a yellow flower today,
revealing its thin translucent colours the next
and I love you, as one can only love
another who can only love a mirror
whether one made from moon-struck volcanic glass
or drawn from the lips of another.

A westbound fog steadily showing its face,
as the sun hides its own.
On a bus bound for somewhere far from here,
an unknown destination far away from home.

Through every savanna, through every green field,
through every soggy
marshland with mud sticking to the heels.

It seems that everywhere I go,
whether it be high or low, far or near
time never seems to slow
and she’s never really here.

With every shrinking cigarette,
each separate dying ember,
with each slow wilting flower,
with each breath, I surrender.

Thoughts of the living traded in for the dead.
“Vanitas” or such, I believe men once said.

Can you feel the empty?
   It hangs thick in the air
      palpable
         tangible
Pressing; it feels like malevolent intention
   in the eyes of a killer
Quietly stalking, biding time
    preying upon those who are weak enough to submit
      and stupid enough to venture alone

"THE BREAKDOWN COMES WHEN YOU STOP CONTROLLING YOURSELF / AND WANT THE RELEASE OF A BLOODBATH" - JENNY HOLZER

I. Vanitas Vanitatum
[The stage is set: a paper moon against a starless, greyscale sky. GINSBERG howls. He's nostalgic for all he'd assumed was forgotten; desperate to never recall it again. His numbered days are manufactured: ELIOT reclines, watching the world end.]

CHORUS OF PROPHETS:
In our own sins we trusted,
both in essence and in nature.
Hell was never an inferno:
it is an echo chamber.

We have nothing (-- we have nothing --)
but maxims and jumbled alphabets
and lightly-sparkling bitterness
when the cork pops feebly from the bottle;
(-- nothing! --) dripping saltine hate.

We've lived large and small, been tiny and tall;
always filling too much space in a too-big room
where our presence is ironically scarce.
There is nothing for you here,
bar vacant lungs and river water --
take a breath and join us
                               in sinking to
                                            (sinking!) the
                                               (sinking!) bottom
                                                  (sinking­,) of
                                                        (sinki­ng...) the
                                                             ­              Styx.

II. Et Omnia Vanitas
[Enter PLATH, SEXTON, WOOLF, BYRON, DICKINSON and VARIOUS PHARMACEUTICAL BRAND REPRESENTATIVES.]

You know not what you could be
but merely what you are
and that alone is traumatic enough.
Taste it, a slice at a time:

the disillusionment from having raised your hopes beyond rotting in the soil,
the anger upon realising this was your own fault and all you want to do is scream,
the bargaining, the denial, the scream (you were not born to live). The gradual processing. The scream!
Scream at the moon and scream at the walls and scream into pillows and howl and wail and hack away at the flesh and screech until plastic surroundings melt and it is only you and the void you willed upon yourself.

III. Epitaph (What Now?)
[A white-fur baby seal is camouflaged upon the ice
and, eyes closed, fools itself into thinking it survived.]

What happens next is no act of evil:
this is survival of the fittest.
We are bottom-rung of the food chain
and starving predators need to eat.

[We lick the ground and taste defeat.]

Ruby poppies reach heavenward --
small birds take their maiden flights.
I shrivel, putrid in the soil,
in the winter of my life.

Vanishing
vanities of life
eventually...
disappear
in the hands of those living
Skulls and roses
time and dice
and...
wilted flowers
all wry and dry

it is so easy to **** me unknown brother
carved Samaritan image
do yourself a favor I’m an undecided blotch of color
indigo reaching for purple
shut at once the book you read from
and I’ll become a butterfly with my wings crucified
on two pages

~~~
maybe because of the need to forget
I see death as a hindrance on the wheel of torture
a camphorated ointment for nervous fibers ends
I’m closer today to the tree for hanging the noose
from which God forbid you to taste
look vanitas vanitatum
Yorick’s head lies on your plate when you receive your alms
the candle the baked apple and the wheat porridge helping

~~~
I stand up facing the wall
my voice isn’t yet untied
I wonder what is stronger and if the heart tips the scales
my achy breaky heart
on the balance between life and death
there are a few extra grams of soul
we will need very tiny jewellery weights
psalm 103
Fibonacci’s series the golden ratio

~~~
look my child the soft carpet
my warm body upon which you step this sacred day
my soles are thin they stick to the red clay
I turn upon the potter’s wheel
my everlasting mentioning
like I was that’s how I’ll stay
a crumb of Eucharist bread on the lips
the first and the last