Brushes With The Dark Law

 Published in the Winter, 2021 issue of The Vital Sparks

A Crack at Dawn

Je songe à une Guerre de droit ou de force, de logique bien imprévue.- Rimbaud

1

Perhaps it is the Warrior’s Dilemma or an addiction

to the lack of patterns. The lost lodestar of what’s created.

Let’s listen to reveille at soleil rouge,
and the beats of the warning drum on an accidental sky.
The rhythm counts cold hands
and marks time for the heart thumping under tow.

Let’s say what’s hungry calls it off with a list of long distances.
Let’s march on the fields watered with blood.

Because there is a war. The signs drip with broken hot water.
The criminal is exalted. The power of submerging.
The fragmentary reticence and the French circumlocution.
Surely you noticed.

Soap, the reign of the signified. The journey out of luck,
marching from the shoreline. The gulls circle a pillar of cloud,
a manifesto glows for maneuvers at night. We rush to bury
the sand. The swords and spoons measure both fixity and flux.

Surely you noticed.
I’ve moved away from the detritus.
I broke out the coffee pot, dug through another layer of day,
and so marked another threshold in
another series of series.

A battle of moments strung in simple rhythm.
Your bloodsport denial digs in.
My confession crawls forward with white flags.

Maybe the hero is id’s saboteur, hunched, waiting.
A game of spies and moles. Praising
you who are left to maintain the supply lines.

2

What if there were a limit to second chances?
Obviously there are more than two.

Last night I dreamt of an old woman, akin to the witch
in Hansel and Gretel, reaching in the pocket of skin
for reparations.

I had asked for guidance from my higher self in the dream state
as I had gone to bed.

Each morning is the first and last.
That’s two.

3

The slight passage to open air
changes all.
(I’ve lost the hunger for concrete things,
for instance).

There is no rain nor storm to pass, the war
is suffered and won, only the rotation matters
in our garden home, our dungeon, our workshop.

Each circadian episode addicts.
I am addicted to enough.
Frantic for the absence. Myopic, singed and declaiming.

This god not even a bit tired on his throne. Helios relentless.
Untidy plans forestalled in the obvious
unerring arc
of progress
through our sky.

Suffering arouses the god inside,
announces terms of surrender
with the simplest music
under cover of day.

Martialed breath? I admit it.
Thy (thy) name only rests my lips.