148. These Grey Cities of the Northeast

It begins in the shape of a section of a thought presented as if understood.


I.

One or, as I am, I.
You see, or so the assumption is, through
Your eyes or the dark holes
In your eyes, cylinders descending
Into sense, because—consider this,
As you will, as an intellectual—sense
Is not a naturally occurring state. It is
Created out of the whole cloth of
Existence by the human mind, though some
Sense might reside in the minds of animals,
Their perception is a mist. They see
And react
Without knowing, and knowing is all
We have, in the way that we know
Each other, or that he might
Know her.


II.

To or also towards
The sense (here
In a different sense) of
What a human is
As a conscious automobile
Being, and as a locus of
Emotion changed by the application
Of alcohol, a change in the
Weather, her sudden change of temperament
That causes a similar change in him. There is
No us in this world, only
Separations of me from you,
Particles of human sentience
In isolated existence, of a
Thinking mind intersected by
Other minds but bisected
Within itself
From the idea of what it wants to be and the reality of
What it is.


III.

Trinity as a singularity
Is less than a myth, just a confusion
Of thought, father father to himself,
Son son of himself, and the little floating flame
Above the heads of the disciples
To signify this evanescent presence
That represents some thing other
Within the godness of it
All, and we are nothing
But what is left after thinking,
After thinking it through. A moment’s
Hesitation of a thought
And we might not exist
At all. Everything exits
Without entrances.


IV.

Forth into the fury of the fulcrum,
The small force that bears a large
Object away, and we learn,
At the knee of our pity, what
Horrid space our own anger
Takes up, pushing aside even
Disappointment for the largest
Seat at this small table
Of a life. A lifetime of slipping,
And we might find away to
Keep our balance as we slide.
No-one person tractable to anything
But the singular purpose of
That life, like
Losing a grip but leaning into
The fall anyway.


V.

A fifth of something brown and a V
Of geese heading south through the night, because
Sleep is the action of the dead, and we
Must go on living or approximating
The living. This zombie life, of repetition
Played over repetitions. See a life go out,
And something leaves you, even if the end were near,
Even if the life brought its own death
With it. No-one is alone so long as
The echo of a thought
Can reverberate
Within a skull.


It ends in the shape of a section of a thought presented as if never believed.