You keep your sacred objects in
an empty mason jar,
you think that you’re anonymous,
but we know who you are.
My horoscope was written by
the oracle of pain,
though our bodies decompose,
our gilded hearts remain.
It’s hard to blame the oracle
for every dream come true,
I’d explain my version of events,
if I were you.
Death, he said, won’t hesitate
to cut you down like wheat,
a harvest of remembrance for
the carnivores to eat.
Life, he said, is missing something;
everybody knows,
it’s hard to live without a moral compass,
I suppose.
The oracle said panic was
a lily dipped in gold,
the tears of birds with scarlet eyes,
condensing in the cold.
Fame is like a garden where the weed
outshines the rose,
a bed of dark pathology,
where any flower grows.
Love is like an animal
that eats its young alive,
only those without remorse
are destined to survive.
Memories and dreams become entangled
in your sleep,
they grow like coral on the shrouded bodies
in the deep.
We lost the keys to paradise,
we broke the crystal balls,
we kept the bloody carving knives,
embedded in the walls.
We asked the god of famine to
regurgitate the bones,
he said we'd find them underneath
a pyramid of stones.
The oracle had mirrors that
distorted time and space,
bones, he said, are like the architecture
of the face.
I bring him tea and opium,
he watches as I pour,
the past, he said, is harder to remember
than before.
Time, he said, is measured by
the phases of the moon,
sure, I said, and drank the tea,
and stole the silver spoon.
We argued over water as
the house was burning down,
I wore a nest of intertwining serpents
as a crown.
He said he saw the face of satan
carved in human bone,
if I was him, and he was me,
we’d never be alone.
We played a game with tarot cards,
he wore a crown of stars,
I bet him my immortal soul
against his mason jars.
Even though I had a king,
I played the queen of hearts,
history is written by
the keeper of the charts.
mt forest
August 24 2013
#211