Quiet night
no folly food
Just solitude ;
a chill scares up the hairs on my bare arm

With the outset of your child
to a brisk, cold wind unfettered.
How do you stare starving virgins
in the face as they float untethered.

Lies are a currency, counterfeit only to etiquette,
and emotion, and love. We lie,
locked eye within eye, in ways
to boost pride.

When vainglory preaches to you from a
styrofoam podium.
How do you recollect your bargains
Made in dead of night,
blanket to your neck.
Lies can sate those fever dreams
crept upon you from *****.

Does love mean love if it is said with force?
Faint heart never won fair lady.
Without Victorian hysteria;
Our corsets are not so tight
We lack the need for chaise longue
May we lack the need for, indeed nor,
the lie?

Reinaldo was the name they gave the great white elephant
Who came to clear the jungles around Sao Paulo
A clever notion that because Reinaldo was born in the jungle
Any jungle would do just fine, Brazilian or Siamese made no difference
Just as clever was the notion that because I was a black man, educated
I would do just fine directing other black men to do work, English or Portuguese made no difference
Was I truly so much a fool, twice over?

Reinaldo occasionally was afflicted with slothfulness
Some of the men thought it was from lack of **** and whip
I was of a mind that it was due to lack of companionship
It was costly enough to ship one giant beast across a great sea
I left a wife, in Maryland, whom I never loved and who never loved me
I admit before the plan was in motion I never considered that Reinaldo could have a family
Sometimes, I wonder, did he have a wife who never loved him?

Loneliness became a common theme in our new home away from home
And Reinaldo and I became friends, at least I thought of him fondly
As far as I could say, of all the men he responded best to me
At times it seemed a load of lumber was hauled as a personal favor
For the handler too soft to handle with fear and anger
But as much as loneliness was a theme, so was change, and death

The lifespan of an elephant compares to the lifespan of men
Were this scheme of mine to have worked as desired
I could have sent for a cow, and made Reinaldo a sire
Soon it was revealed that slothfulness was a symptom of an elephant young, healthy and wise
Who sensed not his own, but a friend's imminent demise
Now I am left to wonder how Reinaldo will fare in a world stranger than I could have known
His softest handler and only friend bedridden, waiting for my disease to take its final toll

Light lengthens as you spin upon my thoughts
Blinding my darkness as you whirl like a top
As if the sun had settled on you
Scandalously running from the sky
“Doom” The phrase, raving men of the world scream in rants
The same phrase oozed from the sap of plants
And echoed as well from all animal's pitiful pants
For not a single ray stayed to shimmer

Chase away what I feel
The taste has remained so long
Unsteady are my hands
As the light brings another dawn

What were once picturesque colors
Seems shutter into a dismal display
As darkness wedges into the void
My own shadow lights my way

When an existential plague begins to ensue
So does my heartbreak as I return to you
For heart wrenching as it is quieting my mind
The drone of another day is that which I cannot survive

For breathless I become when pressed to my lips
Slowly the cold is traded for the warm abyss
And though try as I might I cannot gain control
Drawing ever nearer till it has taken hold

And while others shutter at the thought of what takes place
I only begin to rest my weary head upon its solitary state

.
Lear wanders in stormy open, bares warring elements,
The heavens blister, crackle, night is balmy shroud,
Wretched monarch babbles in sprinkles of wind cold,
Arguments lost by ones own pouring perturbations
And raining sky said 'nothing will come from nothing.'

Howl, howls into blackness treed in lightning splits,
His outcast soul, reels, fleshed, cut to smithereens,
Tang of salt burns on the bluffs and the sea rages,
So entire and ceremonious is Lear's fall meted out,
Air spoke, 'nothing from nothings ever yet was born.'

Sky proclaimed to man child King, here is a reckoning,                                    
Each mad choice was self infliction, now wind flays
And sweet Cordelia lies in her innocent **** grave,
Sky, in thralls of thundering asks, 'what say thee now,
King of highborn follies, even purple heaths are rags,

Yet black and above you and night shades, whine,
Unworthy King, done in by compounded effects,
The might of maelstroms in low butterflies wings,
How now, bare trees, knifing reeds, skeletal flashes,
To rains of night are ever your lanyards my lord,'

Sad Lear so near oblivion fell mute, sky went on,
'Howl and cry mad King your reaper calls beyond,
The icy brisk heavens await to brusque you away,
Your slipshod kingdom was mere and fools' dream,
Howl, til howls abrupt abate, for nothing now comes.'