To ensure the clear passage
of entropy's leaden barge
down the switchback curves
and convoluted canyons
carved by sequential time
as it winds its steady way
through the veins and arteries
of a moment's maturation,
the vermiculate reaches
of chronological space
turn on the countersunk
hinges of cause and effect
in direct proportion
to the number of atoms
remaining before the Fall.

When the night chisel
of chance and expiration
dissembles the wheels of logic
with nanosecond accuracy,
where the bets are urgent
as sheaves of burning children
and the croupier's blue-tinted
eyeshade is faintly dusted
with mutating microdots
forged in the furnaces
of bacterial recreation,
even the clouds begin
to flex and spansule
in the homogenous patterns
of willful indecision.

In the wake of timeworn
and sensuous debris
the broken capillaries
and algorithms of desire
remain unrecanted,
the ontogenic ocean
still bathes the limbs
in degenerative fire,
you can almost hear
the skinned silence
that inhabits the
blood of light,
and believe me,
once the mitered beams
of the domed Capitol
have been removed,
you can rush to touch
the unfurled wingspread
of bed-warm violence
as it racks and crucifies
the shifting parameters
of our stimulated vision.

Appeared in Grue #10, 1989

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