A Donkey In Thirds

The left, went blind,
yet the right, found a way;
a path at right angles,
a line to arc astray.
Draw it in, just Creator:
sergeant, incite,
your command,
destroy!

The right, went blind,
yet the left,
went wandering.
Off into mists,
making lakes;
void in blue regions,
rest denied contentment.
The heavy Field of Night,
supporting the millions
of dreamless sleepers;
reporting a thing, reality seeming
an endless stream, even living.
Sad, set in motion, sad.
So the poet would believe,
so the world unfurled, red,
would have us receive,
sad in its delusion,
a faith
where hope ought not to be.

Faithless at the burning.
Saddling a bonfire stake,
down with creation!
Down with creation!
Die! The Golden promised land:
made of machë, belched of Eden.
Right, thought they forced it out?
Thought and thought,
throughout a mind,
diseased and hopelessly morassed.
Three dreamers go sleeping,
maybe one sees the light –
wakes for a moment,
and promptly dies.

The machine stops, the gears grind,
the beast blind and miserable,
wonders what’s next, what lines to mind,
looks down, in horror, as its organs fail.
This one breaks fast
with splinters and gloom,
this one is maggot;
this one is high.
This one green-girdled,
crowned-brow, and gild-lifted,
is ripe with the glory of decay.
Demanding nothing,
of a middle-clinched eternity;
this one suffers moment to moment,
even as it withers away.
Even as it withers a way -
time honeys, tars,
and desiccates;
dead before the hour ends.
Until only a lowly
mineral glow remains,
until the ash vanishes,
an ember of diminishment.

A great struggle drowned
in a riven dale of tears,
a doomsman’s black-masked dance
under –
a lidless, sunless, formless sphere.