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Theater of Utter Charm - Part 25

part 25

there is enough pretense to deal with
when the future delivers
disappointment after disappointment
and the roles you play become stale
and you cling to the trend in the graph line
breathing without permission
and noticing that what goes in those eyes
can remap your expectations minute by minute
if your fall back is rank and privilege
and its grand assumptions of unboundedness
in the hand of cards you were born with
standing at the entrance of the scarlet abyss
where you can hear the engineers clanking away
ragamuffin poets lost heretics and outcasts
working the fields stomping out another
flying saucer crop circle cliche
then it's not chaos obviously
life has always been complex
we are just now learning how seriously complex
while remaining free enough to put 2 and 2 together
we are all observant it's the default condition
but we somehow don't keep it alive for long
yes we kill our observations with a list of weapons
as long as a shopping mall aisle
all of them a cheap wall paper a coat of paint
who or what then is left to rescue us
other than a failure so deep a guilt so painful
a forfeiture of all interest in presumption
because you see the bottom can scrub you bright
and free your stuck thought compass
because stars explode and planets die
how do you negotiate with an inner monster
a dutiful cleric burning the unfaithful
while lifting the skirts of parishioners
we wish to see through the eyes of those we admire
in some impossible yet seductive way
because of a voice that said you can't have it
he raised himself without a sense of belonging
and avoided people who had become magnetized
sucker punched in the brain by half wits
with an invisible case of self amnesia
picking up the ground laying fruit
none of them able to call it a day
while it is still daylight
hence the romantic melancholia
where design is lurking at the periphery
with a bad sense of perfection
a sticky wicket no question
when you raise yourself from the dead
recognition scant admirers few
pathway strewn with thistles
guarded by turtles on roller skates
why are the mighty so cruel
is the next question in our archive
in general as a whole
I'll tell you why
they have been forsaken by the greatest of gods
Tomorrow
it is the animator the mark the bulls eye
the cross hairs the naming
the horse with outstretched wings
the punctum saliens the idea spike in the flat line
the discovery the devotion to sweetness
(to be continued)


From "Theater of Utter Charm"
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