Vision

More have less
And the least
Take nearly all.

The tides carry fire.

Elders comfort distress.
They tell us Jesus comes
With a Sword:
The new CDO,
Eternally burning value.

All that fails shall be redeemed
By the green
Of His newly minted blood.


And then we will run free and careless
Over fields sweet and full of promise
As a financier's indulgent prospectus.

Care

Timid steps drain
down bright corridors,
rustling leaves trapped
in shafts of cold light.

Tears are staid.
Comfort never gives
like bone snows
inside her.

Golgotha

Devils' laughter scratches my ears.
I ascend slowly up the mount.
At the summit cruel arbors await.

The breeze blows a sweet angelus
as smoke spills from my orifices.

Magdalenes gather up balls of foil.
Forsaken, their care fails to move me.

What God would raise high the beam
only to depose my ascension?

Pile transgressions
on my striped shoulders.
Call it grace and fashion
redemption from squalor.

Carolyn

Her smile was a slap,
hard and bright
as snow-blind sunshine.

Nightfall,
the thief's chaste flight
cloaks loss in velvet umber.

In time blades 
dull past cutting
carve pointed smiles.

The Hidden Sea

I

In robes they gathered
under the rose

Kindling fulsome light
on their Mistress:

The Empire Militant,
Merchant and Corybant.


From shore to shore
Her varicose veins stretch
o'er the res publica.



II


Ahriman ascends
to shepherd fearful mobs
into a dark valley.
The land where monuments scream
protest of everything present.




III


Lucretius Iscariot took
the golden parachute.

Shorelight dies.

He takes comfort,
on high,
in distant shipwrecks.

Unmanned murders
honey death's ichor.