Recorded Already
and all the answers were recorded already,
trivial as songs their awaited words, heard
heaven reflected. like dull Charon we were
recalcitrant life that lies colder now, intransigent
blood that resumes the crude beat,
storying reminiscence of the before of beasts,
heat. she plays her restoration today of death’s diligent
defeat, in desperate imitation we dust
the lumbered attics and cellars of love
that preserves us, conserved the veins’ unchanging
chambers, written in the heart and responses
mechanical, the Machine Man who dances
though he forget everything, lest he forget
this, the mystery, that the other be
and speak to us in our need, reflected
we. Charon’s oars draw us forward
slow, they splash what is given us to know,
the heaven we seek, the splash of oars
that echo from lifeless night’s beach,
brutal truth, senile youth and untimely childhood,
for the living are infant corpses, clumsy pink fingers
and this taut skin that hems in thin oblivion,
all the scars that are yet missing, mouth of worm
that digs in grimy dust and records the grimy passage
of lust falling back to a disobedient God,
mantra-man who ignores the pre-recorded prayers
he happens to remember, the dismembering
his son invented, the cross that grew from rocky hill
rugged, the love, the weeping mother standing
dolorosa, the stem of the sky and the blueness
of its roses, the sun’s blind eye that stared the skull
blinder on that hill, arrogance, an effort of the will,
missing, the nails in the hands
and the love in the heart, we are all He today
except we fail our task, we fall apart.
Page(s) 25
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