Pots, pans, preludes stacked neatly by the sink,
I sit down to write my pain in ink.
What is this breathing being I can’t see?
This dark face of humanity?
Solitude fights against isolation
Sickly gold child – adulation
A ticking clock starting again,
Brave slave boldly revolts in vain.
Tackle at once my tricky politic;
See not the faces of the quick –
Nor judge the deserving dead so foully,
Screaming now, but always hourly.
I just saw human nature on a clod,
Gripped by some unseen hand, a God?
For mortals, nothing was this piece of dirt,
But Ariadne’s pleasure hurt;
Not dreaming lines, whereby perception brings
To light a world we cannot sing;
For their shadows have always been a show,
Yet from story false myths grow.
We attack and attach, until the end,
Temporal craft, temporal men.
When man cannot be trusted to be man,
We find one who can, a woman.
Whence creation, which I understand not –
Who understands the blank page?
– Because the mind brings the author order,
Like difference, yet stronger, broader,
Repeated, as though a machine, printed
Neat typeface, justly indented
Indicating to me that I exist,
I drift – creation masques chaos.
Our being gently bows its tilting head,
To enter now the saintly bed,
Would be relief, if I weren’t what I am:
A fake, a lie, a cheat, a sham.