when you find a dead monk,
set him on fire.
the flames burn the color of the robes.
my color, the robes.
orange and red.
ascending from marina's Dark Zone
i look up and upon
the creatures of the deep -
softening the horror of their countenance.
i see black to blue, orange to red.
the Sun is a lynch pin
the monks are all on fire.
the Sun and Moon are a
vector and they are a
time piece.
when you find a dead monk, brother,
set him on fire.

No buttressed vaulted ceilings here,
or monkish men in robes of cloth,
a space where things are sold and bought
and yet, there is an atmosphere:

A cloistered hush outside of time,
etched in rows of words, wooden,
the self’s restrained demarcation
seeds this scene for the sublime.

“In the beginning was the word”,
nothing before that differentiation,
in the assemblage of imagination,
a whispered restless breath is heard, as

marks on paper command the motion
of eyes and thoughts across a texture
in which silence is a rapture,
the echo of yearning and union.


Copyright © 2003 Gary Brocks