Okay Obelisk

This unblinking obsidian.
or maybe onyx. Soapstone stoicism
til it deigns to smile.

But only at my confusion.

The grandmaster has pulled
the final threads from the ghost
lodged in his grey beard.
Only to see,
frozen in one Kremlin’s spire,
nest other icy towers.

The hall is wainscoted
in a plagues of mirrors.
My reflections mock
these trembling fingers,
pressed tight
against too-white temples.
Tired of trying to stir thought
from broken Faberge belfries
lodged in this cracked egg.
Every game ends the same.
Checkmate.
You win.

Okay obelisk.
Fine monolith.

But what about
what you’ve done to this poor alchemist,
suffering now
with the all rest
in your hadal abyss?
Let’s laugh with stone,
watch as the man sheds
elixir from eyes
hoping his tears might prove
the one needful ingredient
to coax a golden dream
from a slate of leaden days.

But what if instead,
his dreams should decohere
to unremembered mist?
Then let us cackle
through snuffed echoes
at his quest-prolonged ague.

Why great Olmec, giddy Easter Island Godhead,
—Tiki tyro—
give me this brain
if the convolutions are only byways
in your minotaur-plagued maze?

We have all tried.
From Kubrick to cockroaches.
But you won’t let us win.
Even to salve wounds with stalemate
or live long enough
to do ought but watch you laugh.
So laugh stone
at this skin,
too weak to do.

I’ll settle for dream & lament,
in the hopes they break you
and what you’ve sculpted,
which might be me.

But even suicide isn’t stalemate.

Thus I’ll stay
my blade from veins.
Pray I live long enough
to see you petrify,
preserved in whale-brewed gold,
ambergris like stones squeezed
from Jonah’s eyes
encompassing all sorrow
in what infinite yellow suns espy.

Discourse Between Saint and Dog

Open this day
where the dog licks the buboes
that suppurate
on the legs of the saint.

The hermit balances
his blackthorn stave
as he tries to remember
words about Plato and caves.

Or the difference between
stalactites and stalagmites.
One dripstone dances from the ceiling
Another rises from the rock.

What about where a nose should sit
on a human face?
Or how a woman’s love
stills the waters
but not like the freeze
of a grotto’s icy glace?

Decades of silence,
Or at least sans voices
form their own harmonic
spheres.

To sit on a cloud
molded by one’s own hand,
is the only true gift.
So give and accept it.

Growth of mossy down,
beard like lichen
touches my chin.

The quiet candle glow
of hand clasped on hand.

Time
spilling freely faster now than sand,
flicker my gold against gray rock.

Touch my copper dream,
converse with dog,
close eyes.

Meet God.

Stutter simultaneous apologies
for the dreams we’ve done each other.