poets, comedians and villains
always follow
in their path. Each claims
to know the truth; says
everyone is equal;
how things changed
because things had to change.
If this is the only sense
I make, this is the only sense:
I am watching you undress
through the window;
I have fallen in love
with the grammatick
lunacy I have spun;
as you are flung,
your image passes
through both window
and me.
The only sense I make
is what I have foretold—
the passing of time through
the planes rehearsed,
yours and my place reversed—
I am naked before you.
In myself:
everyone is equal
before the law.
In you:
the victim, the
law requires it.
Everyone else can be part
of the jury (or the moon),
shining reflected
through the window
(in everyone’s thoughts.)
As we:
undress the victim,
read the blood in the mirror,
a story told in flesh
so old, so new, so fresh
we are refreshed
in spite of ourselves
by a triumvirate—
the incoherent, the liar, the thief.
The thief we kill to precede
the new god, leading him to death,
that pomp and ritual be observed;
the poet we burn to light god’s way
to the resurrection; the comedian
tells jokes.
There are laws,
there are commandments,
there are threes—
mother, father, son,
furies, fates, sisters,
bibles, stages, faces of eve,
guns and superheroes,
the inevitable consequences.
Peterborough Poets 