Birds of culture, rains of war
lovers lost and livers found
while raging nature bucks
and kicks until she tires
and falls down like a
spent antelope.

We trudge along and fade
into the lower limbs of life,
we work our way into
the recesses of
the pachamama’s brain.

Deity or wreckage, saved,
salvaged and destroyed forever
all in one sentence, infinite
and concise. Strung along
by poetry, evicted by prose.

We stumble and falter on our trip
to the great beyond, the unknown
that we desperately need
to be familiar, soft, homey
like a chenille bathrobe maybe
or cinnamon buns in the oven
though you know they will be burnt.

Smitten smiles and frightful tears
all walk along in this dreadful parade
of know-it-all optimists and fatalistic
prudes. Part of it they want to be
and part of it they are though they
don’t know that they’re the show,
they’re the acrobats, the sword-
swallowing fools. And more,
they don’t know that they will
surely fail.