‘The Charade Known As Karma’… from In Riparian Fields

Before dust, which lightning struck
the gravitational pull of tide,
a sway you did not trust you would deny

Anything your soul betrayed, a
solemn exchange for illusions, the
comfort you realize more has been uniformed

Surrendered now, the whimper smothered
in an idolatry of things
with which you congratulate your bravery

The luck there was no other necessity required
you would use to convince yourself exactly
whose sacrifice has been greater than the day

You and others equally could mislead, which
might manipulate to serve a quest
then proclaimed holy, and a sacred mess

For what you knew in your charade
you have traded for, those
endless inquiries into what it is to be made

Contrived of that thing lost in methods, even
you do not suspect are true
as long as you can continue in a cold certainty

Of the conjured exotic: how heaven
and earth seem unmeasured now,
by either value or the cherished worth described

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Limbo now is not a dance
the dangling participle no entrance
suggestive of sex or science

or language masticated by the toothless
but too much exile
waiting for the light of the world

to atom blast your face
against the concrete realities
overwhelming everything by

the Babel feast of lost stories of innocence
as if that were a gift, a credit at
the merchant store of false narratives

of success over the one slice
dimensional forces
spewing forth a dialogue

in a broken tongue neither you nor I
anymore wish to speak or learn
or eat

or kiss anyone with such a device
good only for swallowing tripe
so that we could endlessly

repeat again
lives led in slaughter and denial
our white hats smothering

what occurs
while we tightrope walk across the abyss
to a music made by monsters

This is the tongue in which we speak:
Words that gather silently, a rush

Of blood to the toes and knees; a quiet
Flush gathered without touching please

The blush your sweet lips can be,
Gathering my language inwardly, the hush

Made so swiftly sweet and complete: a
Push and thrust to breathe and read