journeys of a restless mind

Archeaology

Even queens had to pierce their tongues
and light fire to their blood-soaked prayers.
The heavy smoke drifted skyward,
then dissipated between the snaky vines.
Visions, once conjured, had nothing to reveal.

There is no redemption.
No one has seen heaven.

Her name, carved into towering stelae,
crumbled along with her bones.
No one remembers her sons;
her cities lie split by roots and brambles.

The days have been counted,
things put in order, secrets
stored deeply inside caves
or buried beneath temples with trapdoors.
Still they come, centuries later
to rip it all out again,
believing that to decipher
means to know.

The gods are hungry,
the daimons hungrier.
The insatiable future
stuffs scripture, now profane,
into its gaping mouth.

garbage day

She counts the lies one by one
and puts them in a glass jar
on the window sill.
From time to time she takes it down
and pops one in her mouth
where it bursts like ripe fruit,
and fills her with bittersweet liquid
that she takes her time swallowing.

Often there are pits
or bits of ragged peel
that get stuck in her teeth.
She pulls them out with her fingers,
shakes them into a garbage can she opens
with her foot on a lever.
It whumps closed, and nobody is any wiser
when she brings the lumpy plastic sack
out to the curb on Wednesdays,
plops it in the tall dry grass
and waits for the smelly truck
to shudder by.

He always comes back to offer more
and she pretends to believe each one,
round and glistening,
immersed in tepid water,
pressed against the inside edge
of the chipped and dirty jar.