POETRY 1

The Pure and Perfect

Someday the messengers will arrive
with stories of a nocturnal sun
despondent, burning implacably
in the deepest shade of a thousand shadows.
They will tell you of the
serene indifference of God.
They will draw you by the hand
through bruised alleyways
and prove the desperation of man
rejected from the beauty of an unearthly realm.
The news will arrive
as a tribute to the death of oracles.
Sparing words of purpose
the messengers will announce the
cold fury of realism’s cave.

Someday, the messengers will send their thoughts
through books that have no pulse.
You will be accused of weakness
that drowns you in servitude.
A queer rivalry will beset you
and your life will crawl like an awkward beast
that has no home.

And you, my dearest friends,
who are truth—who were all along,
will renew your devotion
to a powerful image in a distant mirror.
You will listen to these stories
and tear at your silent heart
with animal claws that are dulled
by the stone doors of time.
Where the unattested is confirmed
your vestige-soul is stored.
It will strengthen you
and cradle you in the light
of your own vision,
which will be hurled like lightening
through twilight’s dull corridor.

The messengers will cry
at the sound of your rejection.
They will scream: “Do you want to be a
lowly servant and lonely saint?”

Mutants of the light
are always tested with doubts
of a swollen isolation
and the promise of truth’s betrayal.
Listen without hearing.
Judge without pardon.
The grand parasite of falsehood
will prevail if you believe only your beliefs.

Someday, when all is clear to you—
when the winds have lifted all veils
and the golden auberge is the locus
of our souls—
you will be tested no more.
You will have reached destiny’s lodge
and the toilsome replica of God 
is jettisoned for the pure and perfect.