There am I
An Island of consciousness
Standing on an Island beach
On a planetary Island in space
Circling a celestial Island in a galaxy
On the outer rim of a galactic Island in an expanding universe
That is an Island in a multi-dimensional array of infinite universes
Singular
Infinitesimal
Inconsequential
But in this moment
I am
I am enough
Necessary and sufficient
For consciousness has no bounds
While it has no explanation
It needs none
The buoy sings
In broken meter
While gull cries
As steel
Rings out its soul’s lament
Rolling on the seas becalmed
Which lap gently at the marker
Slings languid clapper
Side-to-side
Until it dings
Seeking gull’s reply
For bereaved augment
Not one to be remiss
The gull
Its song amiss
Takes wing with foulest aural screech
Through which the many souls buried
Here
By storm
Beseech
For they that never heard the bell
But discovered rocky shoal
With sundered timbers of their hull
Forsook their invitation to God’s holy hell
No, not that descent
Instead remain beneath the sea
Without repent
To pull the chain of their lament
This Melfort Bell
Forever
Out of meter
Comes the night
With celestial swagger
Its vanguard in scarlet, violet and indigo
Descends the void dotted by galaxies and stars, a planet or two
Beyond the dim beacons built by small creatures
To penetrate the darkness they fear
Storms brew
Days end
Energy crackles above
As I close my eyes
Images of shackles
Men
Women
Children
Marching
To their disappearance
Open
Again
I see
Only power
Ominous
Irascible
Malicious
Irrational
Malevolent
Lines of transmission
For a singular mode of thought
Enabling the incarceration
The disappearing
Of free will itself
Then
The shackles of power alone
Would suffice
Though the disappearings
Always continue
Unabated
By lack of need
Simply
For the demonstration
Of power
In a city of thrum and hum
Always in motion
Always in commotion
Whose voice knows only to shout
Islands of quiet patience
Await their moment
To rejoin the miasma
Of humanity
Languid moments follow
Sun’s final thoughts
Bounds the sky
From golden to indigo
Wherein abides such grace
There I, manifest, serenity
The wide-eyed innocence
Beyond recollection
Beyond nuance
When the world could only register
In stark simplicities
Mommy/not mommy
Pain/tickle/ooooh!
Shiny!
When I was free
To express
Every goddamn emotion
I felt
In every moment
A torrent of tears
Screams of anguish
A coo for a stranger’s caress
Giggles for the silly thing
Shaken for my joy only
And awe
So much awe
Now nuance has become unsubtle
Which tinges awe
With the immensity
Of evil
So I long for an innocence
I cannot recall
Knowing it only in the eyes
Of those who have no words
To remind me of it
I envy the present
That lives behind their eyes
But the future?
I fear for them
The puck hit him
Square in the facemask
A one hundred mile per hour slapshot
And it really rung his bell
The world shattered for him
Spun like an off-centre top about to fall
Vision blurred
And he felt a little sick to his stomach
Like he felt during the weird, disparate moments
Of the past weeks and months and years
That flashed through his mind
As visual and aural nightmares
There was the candidate gloating
About sexual assault
And getting elected anyway
Though it all should have ended
Before it even started
In an open mic moment
And an administrative error
That sends a man to a foreign torture chamber
And making no effort to bring him back
Or even apologize
A man who already can only be counted
As one among thousands
Soon tens of thousands
And how many more?
Only history puts an upper limit
The lie that no judge has the authority
To adjudicate the actions of a president
Who can simply ignore the law
“Long live the King”
He proclaimed with a ridiculous faked cover
Straight from the halls of the White House
After he went after a city
For the temerity to write
Its own traffic laws
This “leader of the free world”
Promises to annex one sovereign neighbour
Though he needs nothing it has
Run a hostile takeover on another
As if a landmass were a corporation ripe with assets
And send troops to take a canal
Because, well, it used to be his
There he is
He and his orange smirk
Swearing oaths
He would soon break
As if epithets and slanders
Surrounded by billionaires
Many with their own agendas
Catalogued in a plan for 2025
Serviced by their sycophantry
To an emerging despot
One is also a gloater
Who takes a chainsaw
And a woodchipper
To entire agencies
And the tens of thousands
Who’ve worked to make them
The envy of so many
And to the tens of millions
They serviced
Then whines for all to see
When the millions
Stop buying his shit
Both product and actions
And set his world on fire
Then yesterday
A tablet of tariffs
Against every trading partner
Friends, allies, enemies alike
Without cause
Without reason
But to a great effect
All can see coming
But the self-styled King
The despot
Now today
The stock market whirls
As its unsteady feet
Fall from beneath it
As does our goaltender
Who slumps forward
Falling toward unconsciousness
While a thousand more absurdities
Flash through his mind
Before his facemask again
Is crushed by its contact with the ice
And then there is darkness
I depart
For farther shores
In rearward glance
The past recedes
Leave behind
Mistaken thoughts
Their wrongful acts
Now turn away
Forge ahead
Find a path to better ways
This arc through space and time
Thirty poems yet to write
But after this
Just twenty-nine
Some days
The words may come
As if a gift
Some days a labour
Subtler beauties missed
But still the promise: words to come
Pix to Words 