In time previous the static stars
In seeming peace, immobile, securely,
Nailed firm into the firmament.
Sense is devious.
Stars have a term to bloom
Out of dust compaction,
Gravity seduced into compressed fury
From the proximity
Of angry infinitesimals.
They birth, they grow,
Expend their glow and dim,
Cease to define the sky.
Frequently explode, disperse
And, like you and I
Die.

In tradition the body,
Stained by disdain,
Seen merely as utility,
Mechanical.
Clearly inferior,
A thing of Caliban.
Turned by pleasure, coerced by pain.
We differ,
Lurking inside its interior,
Sheltered from sunlight,
Shielded from rain,
We are aristocrats of speculation.
We tango with imagination,
Assume a special rapport
Which insulates from the common fate
That presses all else
To total termination.

We conceal from ourselves
This beast, this flesh, this blood
Whose small spinal lightnings
Flash, connect, convey
The incessant commerce of the molecules
To the cave of consciousness
To create us.
Conjuring our ability
To its own utility.
We will away awareness
Something could occur
To impair the passage of the messages.
To not feel the fragility
Of solidity –
How distantly we exist
From reality.

All openings are now shut.
Shadows no more fall
To mimic the real.
I have fabricated stars
To identify my own dark.
Ghosts appear.
Friends and family are evoked,
Dissolve at my thought.
Fields of flowers, summer scented winds
Fragrances of fresh earth,
Of sun dried laundry,
The angry slam of a screen door.
They come, they fade.
I can make a world.

Something rumbles.
Can thunder penetrate
This empty state?
Something’s about.
My stars are going out.