lxxxx.

the lanterns swing, wildly
light falls across

the cobbles, shatters against
the wall--you know it

doesn't matter.

they say, with erudition, that the
father, sometimes

consumes the son.

the permafrost leaking, below the
power station, arcing

the pylons: against the dark,
proclaim a new age, promise

to burn the time, arcing,
cackling in the coils

the ground bleeding
beneath them, but they will

die in folios, diagnostics falling
to dark, the diagrams backlit

by a screen somewhere in the
other world, their only epithet,

there's some places, they say with
such erudition where the

son consumes his father, but--
the lanterns swung,

and shattered. the fall--

swirls, soft and chill
between the trees,

flicks leaves across the alley
between the buildings

the lamps flickering, the half
lit haze, and the dark-line

of the stream, the doors spilling
light into the shadow--it

wasn't enough, the hush and
the shuddering possibility,

what's the point in saying anything,
when the people to come

will be just
as they are now? and if they aren't:

just as easily broken, or dissolved

the walls blaze. the sorghum,
the slopes, the frost,

the tide bleeds, crawls up to
the shore burning--it won't

--the wind rushes between
the cliffs, guttering--

be enough.

you had better burn your
ghosts--before they eat you.