Monday, December 22, 2014

HEART THREAD Parts 109 & 110

109.

There’s a taboo against learning history
tabu, to know yestreen spoils your afternoon
everything forgets, pleasure is always now
back then is all the pain and dark and work and wolf
sunbathers wait for their Renoir, the wind
drives them indoors, Lincoln dies in fever
Romulus Augustulus leaves Rome to die in peace
this is the empire — the sea’s been telling us that forever
forever, no god and no czar, no meaning,
no bible, nobody home, sleep in sun on grass
I forget more than you’ll ever remember
that’s why in sleep I am the same as you.


110.

Ask the sea put on a coat and tie
wear a battered panama
we come close to the pylon where chariots turn
fling into the home stretch at last
fat chance to be Rome without the Romans
live in marble grandly with a purple mind
the Jews taught us angels and never forget
the root of ‘angel’ is the root of ‘king’
an angel is a message on its way somewhere
no angel turns away unheard
but no one knows what language they hear in
or if all our jabber is their arcane philosophy.