Anarchy enters this garden

Still missing Bosch, I awake in the evenings
and search the annals of specters for a lover.

My scars make for aimless maps as I

have become a traveler with no body on

cloud like wings.

All around me are designer brand lives.

The recluse abroad, in a sense there is such

drama, but when it is gone there will yet

be time for fear;

for coming back here, we who lived only

hours ago, find lady liberty guillotined;

from our windows on high, looking down

see her lost in the stormy sea.

Because life requires much time, it could

be called ‘patience’; because death scares

us- it is not.

For we must live and that is why death is

not called love

(despite what some would have you believe).

Love is a place to be
it is why the skull keeps its eyes open-

if only to catch a glimpse of it again,

and there is faith that skulls see it,

for they are always smiling.

Love in life, love in Christ, if it was once-

O, let it be again!
Yet the uncertain hesitate, we are all so uncertain,

if only we could go back,

get back to…

The world is round, it matters not what direction
one goes, if they stay straightforward they
will return to where they were.
Is it so with life?

Is life but a ball for the gods to bounce in court?

How dare these birds- birds, all around me!
Was it not a week ago I was in love with
all things that fly, now I condemn them!
What is terrible about them is they have wings,
yet they choose to be here and not there
let them be persecuted for choosing such
a toxic wasteland.

If only I could aspire to be such a bird, I would

be a bird thusly persecuted.

Let these feathered things be as trees marked for

felling- ever ready for an apocalypse.

The sky rubs on its rouge and I seek out my

dearest friend, the pharmacist, for her to take my
hand, pet it and tell me that all will be righted.
Everything will be okay.

Yet unbeknownst to her I am a bird marked for

felling and I’ve left my bloody flux upon her

hand; after I depart, when she goes to stifle a yawn

in the meaningless empty hour, she’ll contract
that disease which sickens me, all the more
now that I am back where it was founded.

Let her embrace her ennui and disintegrating

morality like a marked tree-

ever ready for the apocalypse.

So, after travel, when that one question, repeated
by different people, happens to come at sunset-
I would answer with a kiss.
It is, however, at every tired hour that I am asked:

“What of our former masters?”

Europe is a wonderful masquerade,
how I recall the girls in Spain, in the bookstores,
how lovely, in the ideology section
this pretty young lady squealed over Lenin
and was embarrassed when our eyes met-
acknowledging the red star on my hat
with such gravity, only to scamper off and be
beautiful and young.

Then the dark Spanish beauty, the kind
that one could dream of,
with rich Moorish history written into her
genetics; I stood in line behind her

and saw that she held fast a copy of

“Mein Kampf”-

ever ready for an apocalypse

Because life takes lust it could be called

‘distraction’- because ‘death’ is hard

it is not, for we must not

live always in ‘distraction’, if that were the case,
‘death’ would be called ‘focus’.

The night smears on its eye shadow, as the whorish
sky beds the many stars, I suddenly miss
the fogged lights of Paris.

Here is a land, with promise and beauty, yet
such evil that perhaps it is all tainted.
I felt closer to it when

thousands of miles of sea separated us,

but disappointment greeted me at the airport.

Now I only face the perpetual thunder storm of
US politics; and every thunder storm is the same-
we lose power…

Now I only face the constant look of sad or bored
bourgeois children and they affect me more

Than the man who burst into tears, while I was
passing him on a dark Spanish street;

for I could see with my hand on his shoulder

that his pain was earned and despite the hurt

he was grateful for it.

Having been robbed, he knows he once had,
and his yearning is knowledgeable.

Does that form of life exist beneath this recycled
sky?

Because life is filled with tragic ends, it could
be called ‘tragedy’;

because our skulls smile it is regarded as a ‘comedy’

and because God binds us it is a ‘divine comedy’

despite Dante’s preference for the former

the church made it what we know,
as we can only laugh for so long

before such hope filled laughter

turns to desperate tears grasping for divine closure.