LAST TRAIN TO GADARA


Magical primordial scenes of forgotten rituals
and sacred animals, by darkness
daubed in caves, carved in stone
ideas too slow and long for meat brains; a memory
like the tiny, delicate flower of a Siberian campion
buried and forgotten by a ground squirrel
frozen in permafrost and resurrected
as a vegetable Lazarus in a laboratory
32,000 years later: subtle decadence
like walking on evening grass in stockinged feet.
Why do I feel like the whole improbable
complexity of my existence
is little more than a small child practicing scales
on a rented piano in the suburbs, over and over:
something that is past and now never will occur?
Neurosis is the plastic head cone for humans
that prevents us licking our distending wounds.
Eventually they bricked up the well-mouth tight
that was so deep and dark and still:
the wise know when their thirst is quenched, the fool
never grasps they’re full and drowns
beneath that black diamond of a mirror

ever denied the direct light of day.

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