Fear the modern man
He who appears fearless
For not behind every ivory mask
Smiles an ivory face
This common tongue knows no plebiscite
Only the commerce of castaway clothes
Engraved hands peeling away skin
Glued together in careless design
Cast by careful masters
They who knew that the heart of the heart of the heart
Beats only once in a lifetime or never at all
Fear the modern man
The modern man
Modern man
These verses I bind
With threads in my mind
Are cobwebs from corners
I once failed to find
So let it linger now and sway
Like dewdrops in day
Or beads of red rosary
No monk holds to pray
They walk alive
In rigor mortis
Of routine;
The selfsame adventures
Over and over
Till memories are maimed
Coagulated
In an endless reel
Of a single frame
Until that very end
When all goes black
And it begins again
Without palpable pause
Amidst absent applause
I go searching on a deserted street
A river breathing and hissing
Like milk from melted moon
But only the shadows are awake
Drowning in silver lake
That Sfumato lagoon
Reflecting the roots of paradise
A silence more verbose
Than that of a breathing statue;
Standing one step less of the precipice
Yet hovering over the horizon
Wingless, blind to the bottom
Of an everlasting yawn that
Morpheus divined in a dream while
Walking on a deserted street
With a burning candle in high noon
In search of river breathing and hissing
Like milk from melted moon
Days like firefly
Burn away
And those ashes remaining
As wings of memory
Cannot fly
Without a flame
THE HUMAN ANVIL 