When death’s errand boy arrives to collect the grocer's bill,
The balance will have remained unanswered.
The mythology of life is death,
And like tales dispensed in the oral tradition—
The Iliad, Beowulf, the Odyssey—
The story of death changes with nearly every recitation.
The order that I seek is something more like chaos,
And it perpetuates despite all reasoned inhibition.
Like the machinations of a tired Proteus,
Being accosted at unawares.
It will surface and speak to my indignation,
This, while the soul concedes to my self-effacing tradition.
Yet, it cannot be mine, and it cannot be yours.
I too often return to evaluate my position,
And still find it impenetrable—
Unmoved by any fool’s tepid fears.
But death’s account grows continuously nearer,
And one cannot pretend that accounts of its comings and goings,
Were ever disseminated by a man who, in his egocentric violence,
Was anything like sincere.
This reality in which I squander spiritual and moral trust,
Achieves its most cutting sentiment,
When it proposes that I change into it,
And I lean now on a bleeding altar,
The last bastion of an impecunious star child--
A false conduit.