Festering instincts operate
the dead machine.
It crawled out from the swamp
to infiltrate our lives.
Art hoax, junk pile,
alien dropping:
it watches unceasingly.
Nothing now moves
or makes the slightest noise.
But, somehow, it’s still alive,
anticipating our fear,
magnifying confusion,
drawing the darkness down.
Its huge shadow
now defines the borders
of our helpless realm.
Art hoax, junk pile,
alien dropping:
it may never let us know.
The edge of a cloud,
when dark as a shroud,
can cauterize the day,
can sweep the blue to Timbuktu
and stain the sun away.
It can disguise the hour,
or else portend a shower,
and even alter
many minds below it.
It dares to smear the sky,
expose it as a lie,
and drive the point home:
you can never know it.
Sitting on the front porch of our cortex,
numbers shine like highly polished knives,
ready to just jump into the vortex,
bringing great precision to our lives.
All lined up in single file or columns,
marching through the tunnels of our brain,
there to scare out all the pot luck golems,
with their mathematical refrain.
One, one, two, one, three, one, two.
Clouds are white and sky is blue.
Nothing wrong these digits cannot cure.
Life is tainted, but these numbers pure.
No class on lawn tonight.
Too dark for prolonged concentration.
Please set timer for last lesson.
Return all books with pages cleaned.
Marks will be given, then taken away.
Thought cannot be taught or bought.
Graduation occurs at sunrise.
Somewhere between the felt tip and the ballpoint,
waving as its flag a typewriter ribbon,
lies in wait the dreaded inky zone.
Where fingerprints are commonplace
and stamp pads are the norm.
Where the badge of honor is a broken pen in pocket.
Where the fountain pen is king
and the inkwell still defines a way of life.
Where no one except martyrs should wear white.
And where the battle cry is still indelible.
Imagine a box full of answers
falling off of the lap of your god,
spilling out on the ceiling of this world,
where we look up and see them as stars.
While we’re ever unsure of their meaning,
as they flicker and tease us at night,
we are sure they have something to tell us,
and we long for this cosmic insight.
We build rockets and planes to get closer.
We have astronauts floating in space.
And we’re sure that the magnified twinkling
would reflect, circumspect, our lord’s face.