WHAT THE GODS SAY
1.
These,
the ghosts
adhering to inner walls,
stains and smudge,
scribbles in haste
‘remember me’.
Words that leapfrog meaning, bray and boast their sounds, exultant cascades untranslatable, insubstantial, picked out, chosen, chaos bouquet, emphatically vague. They are summoned and summon yet more. A duty, to weigh the grains and count.
Enumerate.
Embody.
To be,
(that’s what the scholar said),
to be, only the purpose, the desperate clutch of the sliding mind, the seed to puncture shell, to push aside soil, to explode in cellular satisfaction,
only for a moment,
only a fragment spinning from sight,
(a haze of insect wing, moth dust, singeing carapace),
quick fizz of smoke
before a new
silent morning.
___
2.
The gods are talking and
who, now, will listen?
( except the still heads, still ears of cats, furled limbs, breathing soft).
The songs drunken with time, beyond reasonable explanations, beyond vocabulary, even.
A world rhythm,
geologic heart,
solar wind tatters,
a raiment of light.
Bruised and blue, bullied, subdued with belief, the weight of knowing, the want of neat ends. The jazz ravings disdained, we stutter, scatter, mutter into neat insanities, inexcusable attrocities, the most urbane deniabilities: accepted gospels, ( polite murmur, a scatter of slight applause).
Damned, chained,
not fit for consumption,
bagged, tagged, dumped.
Peeled back, flayed, hearts melted, livers liquified, bones removed, it rattles yet: the endless excuses, one more throw, red or black, no more bets.
Certainly, a certain outcome.
These flickering words dissappear.
Peals of laughter.
Exit stage.
Silence.
—-
The giants, ensorcelled, (confined to the bitter end, the edge, paled and wan)
Believe they begin to believe they doubt their own existences. Instead, we have designed
Towering tree houses, worlds on a toothpick, serpents performing charity,
Clever monsters spruced up, natty dressed, elocuted, certificated
Charm themselves into, insinuate, invade and invalidate the belated wakers.
They are now the boys in charge, elegantly rewriting memory,
Railroading necessities. The taste for giants long past, evaporated ice.
——
4.
Shall I list the devatas, the demons and angels, ( who bear the identical of names, who bear the burdens of our blame). Pinned out, wings splayed, members politely erased, genders hushed up. Who strode worlds: now only the names of new cars, lines of fashion, confections. Reincarnate as pet dogs and cats, the endless dreaming of glories, biding time.
—-
the images are taken from a longer sequence of drawings, yet to be titled and still ongoing, an animation of stillness, a shout of silence