The stage is set with stargazer lilies,

Garbed with candles in semblance of a wake.

I have renounced the fury of Reading

And skinned the sun of my wearied desires.

I have exchanged the warmth for a darkness

Void of sensation, pockmarked and cold,

To best my bane: the abdominal malady

Stricken and striving through my burning bowels

Like Jupiter’s raptor high on the crag

Of the Caucuses making a feast of Forethought.

The poet’s speech is alien to me;

My raging passion snarls ineffable.

All hordes anoint me their prophet and king

Unasked for. I scorn the pissings of men

Each on his bloodspattered plot of terrain

Raving with rape and the thrill of abuse.

Plankton and thugs parroting my cadence

Drip with misogyny, voyeurs to crime;

Fools who condemn themselves by my anthems,

Insects and incels, fascistic vermin.

With screams I delve the deepening abyss,

Rallying the wretched young men served in bleach:

Renounce your privilege. Sons of the Axe,

Suffer your trial by anarchy and fire.

The strings are sharp against my thin fingers;

The air is mellow with solace and dread.

And all my formulated infinities

Gleam in the light of the pale chandelier.

In husks of the sun I seek my serenity

Lone with the living and laureate dead.

Fate coils around my neck a lariat

Cold as the churn of the carceral year.

Each fading day is a new diminution.

Each revolution awakened to shame,

There is no refuge nor substitution;

Mend the heart ruined and lonely with pain.

Mend the heart ruined and loaded with loathing

Deep in the shivering fathoms of fear.

Deep in the shivering paths of the pines

Lend me the silence and sight of the seer.