Poem: Song of a Prophet

 

Song of a Prophet

 

brilliance flooded me,

such unwanted weather.

i became the crossroads

in a quandaries of connections

that carved me out like a trench.

there were parched scorpions

and rattlesnakes of thorns among

the freshest, most vivid lilies and begonias, 

while fossils flipped under my naked soles,

revealing the runes of the whys.

 

i pitied the gods

and had the stamina to wrestle

the most implacable angels.

power lost its daring and thrill,

able and eager to forfeit the game.

it was such a sparse opiate, 

the addictions and fixations and dysfunctions 

which kept the players 

rolling their stones up and down and around 

and back again to all sides.

looking down,

through my fleeting omniscience,

that sweet bliss of cherished nanoseconds,

at love and beauty and care,

the way their flaws avoided all failure;

and how their tears lit pure and moral candles,

these the only real light, and yet, in paradox, 

the only approach we could never complete,

it became clear to me then

that the rest was just 

assemblages of unfolding, foggy math,

what fed the before and the after,

those larger, troubled oceans, so hungry,

on either side.

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