From: CIRCLE OF LIGHTNING, LEVELS OF LIGHT

IT IS...

It is: the Springtime of the just.

Vulgar seasons have said their peace.

The elect dead rise from thawed soil with valid tongues.

Small flames blossom on flowers, sprout from branches, inexstinguishable.

Rivers of vocals, great lakes of music resume their songs.

The Wilderness thickens into shape, migrates into dreams,

spins faster than ever before.

Deep in his subterranean nest, the Circle of Lightning, the Inventor rages,

undistilled.

The electric ache and split of birth is in the air;

hail with the circumference of Edens,

flashes that cut throats.

Tunnels contract, expand:

                                         hallways to crawlspaces closets to bedrooms

                                         attics to verandas balconies to basements

                                                                                                               and back again.

There, he mixes music with emotions, reason with action,

captures elusive heavens, breeding them with rare hells.

"Listen! Listen to me! I have not died in vain!

The song of my last life faded with this phrase:

'I am a phantom-foul, disrupted.'

It is my hearts' New Year: what mortalities will I wear this time?

What genii return with me?, play antidote to my pious hostility?"

                                    *                                  *                                  *

"I still remember them, gutting, hanging me from the lamp post

as if it were yesterday, not a lifetime or two ago

for hawking unheard-of wares, plying new remedies

in a language of elemental definitions.

As I died, I became one of them,

holding the flashlight to inspect my stiffening body,

cautiously prodding myself with my foot.

With my own hands, I stuffed myself into the sack.

With a knowing wink, a shrug,

I cast the soul down through the depths

far beyond the landfill.

"Weeks later, I answered invitations to cocktail parties in their homes,

accompanied them on their travels,

made small talk between drinks on the rocks,

watched for turnoffs from the car.

At the same time, I was pickpocketing their choicest joys, hopes, fears

pawning them in exchange for my own

to those who govern the hourglass.

"The powers all belong to me again.

I will never be so liberal with my sorcery as I was then.

Besides, I have been there so many times, only boredom can successfully

kill me, nothing else.

"The clock is the only natural enemy I fear.

"You! in that foreign land

You! in that blighted city

do you sometimes wonder what I will become?

whether I'll be genial, or obscene?

"My trademarks are everywhere!-stamped on your earth,

re-shaping environments into impertinent images,

changing the tiers of life into impossible canvases."

                                    *                                  *                                  *

"Electricity washing me of the scourge, I

rise

climb

walk-

Inventor, Demon, Magician, Technician,

on my way to meet the true allies of biology-Progress, Nature, Reason...

bathed in light, clothed in a radical oasis."