Without Mythologies
Here, in the halls of automatic learning,
the juries of the new-comical dispensation
require stricter sentences for unfortunate
pedestrians caught in marketing frenzies
and mild chocolate amnesias.
Christ descends upon every third house
leaving sparrows perched on his horrible nails
expecting the sun to come again
day after tomorrow.
Easter vestments curl like magic
horoscopes in the palms of small children,
thin fish that move through moods
of darkest amber.
Children understand the cracker-jack language
that grinds melancholies into their molars—
from their deepest cavities
come songs fashioned in sleepless ages.
Songs sung by the boogeymen who frown—
their capes throw shadows onto the cobblestone,
their mouths bend downward like black rainbows,
bent over the dead crows of their chins.
Through their pupils are the green fields.
When the children feel the warm trail
of urine riding the length of their legs
the fear has manifested itself,
the song moves into darker realms
where familiar relatives wear the faces
of barnyard animals.
Scared shitless,
we turn to the great-grandmother
in the dark,
her hands, the gnarled winter trees,
where we feel safe.
The song moves into hallways
where time’s memorabilia has disappeared
into the walls
leaving cracks and shadows
of forgotten histories.
Faces stare silhouetted against
our now, invade our imaginations
—the silent stories,
linger with us, move us, like misdirected
actors throughout our days.
Here, in the halls of our own sleeping
we wake covered in residual premonitions
unrecognized and rebranded by
pharmaceutical confabulations.
Where children throw rings around
their roses, fill their pockets with stolen
chocolate, play freeze-tag through midnight,
we find ourselves alone
in Lent’s ashes, a disabled symbolism
racing against us
in the night.
