Six and Seven

This place sounds like a slaughterhouse
And I seem to have misplaced my apron.
So, drenched, sticky like sugared water,
I finish my paper and drink my sixth cup of coffee.
I leave a bill on the table for
Alice, or Louise, or whomever.
Sol is hot.
I mustn't forget my sunglasses.

_______________________

It is a peculiar dance,
One that makes the dancers unaware
Of their spinning-twirling-singing story.
Eventually they forget that they are dancing,
The level of mastery endemic to the madman
Who, after long enough, embraces the shrunken cell
And imagines it a palace.

There are never moments of silence here,
But the din is less unique than that of war.
War, when death sounds in a thousand different manners
Before lingering, always, on the same note
That fades as we strain to define it.

Madness does not have just one taste,
But there is always a hint of salt left behind-
To preserve and protect when all other avenues are exhausted.
Even the slightest madness is superior to its lack,
Water scalding the dishes and scraping the grim
From our squalid eylids.

They, perhaps, wonder what I am scribbling,
But they know it is not for their eyes,
That, like a holy book, it sears all but the privileged few.

Not every language has a word for God,
Presumably they have had no need of one.
They've all got words for demon, though,
Dybbuk and devil and djinn,
And it is curious, indeed, that the qualities of all
Are so much the same as those of humanity.
The need to create evil in our own image
Is more interesting
Than the need to mold Great God to human frame.

Both the masochism and the sadism of these cultural touchstones
Is somehow sacred,
With people defending their right to evil
As strictly as their thoughts of peace.
One is never truly free if ones torture is chosen by another.

Coffee is good for thinking,
It sears then warms, all the while laced with sugar enough to satisfy the horses of Cortez.
How frightened those trampled children must have felt,
To be murdered by evil that their elders had not yet named,
With immortal gleaming terror flashing in the sun.
No songs would be pre-made to sing over their pyres (if any would survive to build them)
It was not the fault of the bards;
No one had imagined such a death so there had been no cause for the lyre,
And perhaps now there would be no new songs at all.

It is curious, too, that methods of murder so crude are needed,
And that subtle methods can appear so savage.
The slightest chemical change, and death can come so quickly.
This, of course, is how insects are killed,
Blocking production of an enzyme,
And any death of arthropod can usually transfer without modification
To a child or a seer.

Death is not a puzzle for the dying,
Nor particularly puzzling to the living unless one takes pleasure in being dishonest.
No matter: the swords sings as does the swan
And night falls on Jerusalem.