Where shall I enter this bright canvas
I beclouded on the ocean of ennui
How surmount this ever-liminal state

One foot on the restless shuttle
The slag of consciousness
The pains of sleep

I envision you spectral reader
On the other side of the receding plane
While here events tread apace

I hear that quiet song
As it languorously unspools
Is this what one does

Is this what one does
This nothing this inaction
This weather

They say the people of Hiroshima
Drank the black rain
To assuage their uncanny thirst

Should I be grateful for the world’s shifting
I a pause a meek caesura
A moment’s indecision amid the flames

Should I feel guilty in egotistical bathos
While you silent reader applaud the text
All all deserve to die

How can a voice so dry
Drip with such contempt
Eyes so lifeless so keen

I hear the patient litany
Of those insubstantial essences
Stately calm impervious

But over on this side
Windshear lacerates the travelers
Who crawl from point to point

The city stands silhouetted
Against the sunrise
Tainted by moonlight

A vigil gathers
At the ruined cenotaph
For the cheerful giant

At the toll booth drivers queue
To make atonement
The economy of punishment

I’m sorry for my compunction
My scruples my innoculations
My adverbs and adjectives

How shall I enter this sterile surface
This evasive scrim
Is this what one does

No sphinx shrieks anywhere
No flower blushes in the desert
No machine produces the articles of decorum