I thought that poetry
was not enough, soldering sound
into the circuitry of meaning,
a soldier of the soul’s campaign to know itself
pressing my flowers in the folds
of other people’s brains—an anti-thief
stealing in to pollenate their thoughts
with grains of my embattled hope—
mining the ephemera of minds
smelted and cast into ingots of image,
a sculptor of subconscious pain and pleasure
peening inner surfaces to pebbled
textures of thought—a vandal-artist
spraying Guernica on your mother’s wall
with stolen cans of PBR;

not enough that it could be
the end of all, the story of the story
never told but felt and lived,
the author in absentia on permanent retreat
sending coded messages to warn
the generation next—a propheteer
auctioning the truthfulness of death
with metaphors of holy lies—
giving the ascetics emerald alms
to swallow and enlighten from within,
a savior of the script, a prompt in the nave
whispering lines before they are forgotten
scrolls of dust—a future-critic
closing down the show before it opens
with spoilers in the final verse:
but no, enough itself is not enough
to hear the song above the clang of chains,
the keening of the sea.