Proem
Poetry is personification.
And the words find me, but they come alone.
Without instructions
I take them at a swallow
The pleasure and pain in equal dispensation.

And the answer to the question
Is love and the cosmos.

I.
Is it too late for these or any they resemble?
Was I purchased in error and under the wrong sun?
When the cycles return will I be properly positioned?
Am I in this as grounded as the perennial flow?

The ancients were masters of irrigation and commerce
The four directions, the pictures on walls
Edifices of sand, in pure mathematical precision
A logic in narrative written across an African sky

And somewhere near a lake in a building made of plastic
And confidence
And somewhere between the first and the hotel pillow pavement
In the company of strangers, in the web of conversation
Dancing across the eggshells of intuition

II.

Shy but desperate for bread and song
In the distance one heard the marchers whistling
Looking through the gunfire toward home
Where letters and judgment were waiting

Panicked I ran into the streets to receive them
And prayed to the sky for the rain of remembrance
High off wine and searching through the linguistic codes
For meaning. For stretches of dignity.
For an image. For unadulterated space.

What would I construct
With the power racing though my techno-sophisticated palms?
Upon which table would I pontificate?
Who would inhabit the role of master? Of mistress?
Who would recount the spectrum on my behalf?
Who would give my inklings dimension?

Who would dream for me?
With whom would I place the keys?
God shines on children and fools
They said at the crossing not too long ago
Sometime before
But there were many false proclamations
At that time

I stared at the messenger and took matters
Into my own hands.

III.

I had a palace to destroy
And rebuild in three lifetimes
Between darkness and sunrise.
The swords the size of leaded pencils
And the beard significantly grizzled by age
By indecision and shame
And from a black and white quartet
That stare across the screen
And utter perfection.
I find both cause and cure.

I see and am able to follow
Through the mazes of bookstores
And with a ladder on the top shelf
Divine through the translation the proper course.

No matter when the train is whistling through the city
Towards its destination
Carrying the promises of the faithless
And a cargo of rotted hope.

I pan through the distance
Inwardly laughing at the symbols
Of gentrification
As warehouses become palaces
That ache toward the skyline.

Between the end and the beginning.
In a car stuck in traffic through eons and days;
Dictations taken from the muses on an unused napkin.
Speeding toward the source of warmth and medication.

Epilogue
Poetry is personification.
And the words find me, but they come alone.
Without instructions
I take them at a swallow
The pleasure and pain in equal dispensation.

And the answer to the question
Is love and the cosmos.