My next goal is to eat my way out of this darkness that has swallowed me.

After that I want to eat the soul of the President
once I’ve established a stable residence
as I know how long and how tough a job it will be
to convert that thing into fuel and waste and memory.

It won’t be a good memory
but someone has to do that for the good of the state.
I think I have been chosen for that, for I understand the words
that keep appearing on the flag behind his head:

MENE
MENE
TEKEL
UPHARSIN

abbreviated for the convenience of the moment
and as a way to control the gag reflex:

#MMTU

It’s a lot of weight to carry in my mouth: chewing, chewing for days on end.
No one said it would be easy or quick or appetizing, of course.

After I’ve done my gross digestion, my next goal
will to find gainful employment as a dark muse 
for someone equally constrained by the history of their appetites.

We have to stick together.  
It wasn’t our choice to eat the souls of monsters
and foolish greed-dogs, to save the rest of you
the chore of small-bite revolution.

After I’ve done that we will band together 
into a guild of songsters with worn out teeth and bowels
singing cracked and painful arias about urgency
and the sound of those political bones
in our teeth. We’re only doing it to exhort you
to help us. There are so many of those tough souls
to be eaten. Maybe a rousing chorus will help you choose,
won’t you sing with us, sing along,

MENE
MENE
TEKEL 
UPHARSIN
#MMTU

I have eaten the damn President’s soul
It was heavy but not heavy enough
to keep me from that task
But the flag keeps waving
and the words the words keep coming up

If the whole kingdom must be consumed
you will have to open wide
we will have to open wide side by side

MENE 
MENE 
TEKEL 
UPHARSIN

#MMTU

This dissection of the body politic.

This level of disease being revealed.

This opening along natural seams.

This observation of
burst vessels
open sores
mottled skin 
jaundice
desiccated gums
and lesions.

All routine. All
as expected.

What surprises us, then:

not so much what we find,
but that we find it

here

when we’ve been told that
inside

we are made of, not organs
and blood,
but
sweet light.

With everything turned off in the house
the only sounds are the knocking of the furnace
now and then, occasional scrabbling in the walls from
invader mice, the cat snoring
if I try really hard to hear.

It doesn’t sound like the apocalypse
unless you count the furnace sounds
as the voice of depletion, the mice as inheritors
of our ramshackle ruins, the snoring cat as
the voice of inattention to threats.

That is a choice one can make, I guess,
a choice to let things be what they are and 
not give them meaning. I have tried that
and been found wanting. I have been found longing
to let go, but then the cat stretches and snorts,

something moves in the walls, something
heats up under my feet, and is that the refrigerator
or the rumbling tide of history? 
Perhaps it is not, or it is, or perhaps what is daily
is also what is deadly, and the end is in fact near.

It would be worth your time
to learn how to lie, 

sir. We can see
the smoke rising from

your pants, can see
your nose growing;

perhaps these are illusions
as well, tricky lighting

caused by the waving of
your flagship hair, the shadows

emptying from your mouth?
Sir, we can’t see you behind them —

unless all you are is shadow?
Sir? Are you nothing but smoke

and bad lighting, only a simulation
of human — some kind of 

puppet?  Sir, understand:
we are asking, do you bleed?

Do you weigh anything at all,
sir, or is your incorporeality

so galling to you that you feel
you must stamp this hard on the world?

It would be worth your time
to learn to be a better liar, sir.

Your smoke is showing.
There is nothing in the mirror.

When I fell face first and bleeding within
from amphetamines at prep school,

all the school did was counsel me
and send me home for a week or so
on medical leave. That and my family’s begging
kept me on the college track.

When my buddies at the summer party 

dragged the cop out of his car
and began beating him with stones picked up
from the gravel pit, I was asleep,
drunk in my car, and missed the whole thing.
That and my family name kept me out of jail and the papers.

When I got caught smoking weed
in the Student Union building,

all the cop did was take
my bag and pipe and toss me out
and tell me to go home to the dorm. That
and the decade’s weariness with such crimes
kept me off the court docket.

When I told a cop off for an unjustified stop,
and he let me drive away.
When I tossed the barroom groper into the street
with a broken nose where he hit the sidewalk,
and a cop finished what I’d started
with a laugh.

When I realize how much I’ve gotten away with
and still get away with
compared to some, I am ashamed,

but not enough to do anything
but write this
and swear I’ll do something about it
eventually. That and my kind face

ought to be enough
to protect me. To absolve me.

1.
Whatever’s going on outside,
we want nothing to do with it.

The weather’s gone
snarling and snappish.

It has a nuclear tone
of voice.

It’s not safe in here either,
but at least it’s quiet.

At least there’s heat, right now
at least. Water

and smoke and liquor. Enough
to eat, books to read. 

Whatever’s going on outside
seems ignorant.

It’s not our place to educate
an entire climate. 

Someone else who knows more
ought to take that chalice.

2.
We stared into their homes
from outside. So many of them

had fireplaces but even the ones
that did not seemed warm.

They seemed happy enough
so it was hard to understand

why at the first sight of us out here —
whipped and stung, soaked into despair,

being killed by the howling
taking over — why did they

draw the blinds against us?
We do not wish our fate upon them,

do not wish to
displace them. All we want

is to get out of the storm.
A share of a drier way to live.

They cannot possibly wish this misery
on us, can they?

3.
Those out in the storm
deserve the soaking they’re getting,

though they are not the reason
for the storm.

Those dwelling safe within the storm
are not the reason for the storm.

All the time, there are those
who live above them all,

high above the storm:
seeding the clouds, fanning

lightning into full stroke,
adding thunder and darkness.

There is a method to
this madness.

It is necessary
that some be made mad.

Some must become lost in the storm.
They must feel all of it, suffer and die.

The others must see themselves
as under threat of storms.

The ones who feel the storm
must fix their focus on what they cannot have.

The others must remain focused 
on what they stand to lose.

Everyone must want to climb up
and get away from the storm.

A few make it but only if they take hold
of an offered lightning bolt

and toss it down into the storm
when they get here.

It’s how it works,
how it has always worked.

As for life above the storm?
It’s usually sunny, 

but we hear thunder
under everything:

sometimes, like sweet music;
other times, like the drums of war.

Suppose you find yourself
to be a battlefront
in an unconventional war.

At night you’ll ring your bed
with sensors to prevent
incursions.

You’ll wake up each morning
rubbing bullets
out of your crusty eyes.

Walking in daylight:
dangerous. Walking
at night: dangerous.

Somewhere else, politicians
shall argue about how best
to resolve you

without ever lifting a foot
to come down off their hill
and really see you.

Pieces of your soul
will become refugees from you
and you’ll wonder if they’ll ever

return, even in the peace
you would hope will come
once hostilities have ended.

If that day comes soon enough,
you might become whole
more swiftly.  None of this means

you’ll never smile or feel love
or joy or even a dash of silliness
now and again, more or less often,

but you will always know
the cost of being the site
of a war you did not choose to fight.

Keep sleeping,
says the White Prince.
It’s not safe out here.
We have work yet to do.

If while you’re sleeping
you see something,
say something, says
the White Knight. However
your particular dream-fever
manifests, if it brings you
to a crisis, we want to know
about it. How else to keep you
safe — how else to keep you.

If you reach out in your sleep
for a body, a warm heart, a generous
soul, speak up, says the White 
Lord, and we will slip in beside you.
Spoon you in our mighty arms.
Protect you from being touched
by any but the most pure. 

Keep sleep holy, says
the White Hierophant, who
are we to question the needs
of the body as it longs not to know
what the waking might bring? You
are one of us, one of the Whites
yourself. One of the stunted
royal family, those not properly
exalted yet for dark reasons. 
If only you will sleep, we promise
to wake you when we have finished
making the world ready for you.

Keep sleeping, says 
the White King.  Keep sleeping,
so say we all from Prince to Lord,
from Knight to High Priest and all the way
to King. If you do not sleep
we cannot maintain this luster
you’ve granted us. See how we shine
like the sword we will, one day,
ask you to hold for us,
ask you to carry into battle
even as you continue to sleep. 

All new, all new,
everyone saying it’s
all new. 

All new, all new,
except for those 
who already knew

that this everything new
is not quite nothing new,
just close enough: old ghoul

in a new outfit, old gun
in a new hand. Some see
that face and say, we’ve never

seen that before; those
who know every line of it
find it hard not to laugh,

voices somewhere between
choked croak and open scream,
eyes closed in memory of those

who didn’t survive it
when it burned through town
last century, or yesterday, or

five minutes ago. All knew
someone, all know
it’s nothing new at all.

If what little is new here brings others
to the front, all well and good — 
if they stay. If when they’re safe

they go away? Nothing new
there, nothing new. When they go
those they leave turn and say,

nothing new there, nothing new –
and as always, we knew.
We all knew.