From a confused man feuding with a seabird on an empty beach blossoms this dream of eternity and who to blame The thing he’d escaped there to escape sculpts the obstacle, paces the time selects the near-necessities perpetually withheld shapes the faces rites and escapades that rise from the sands He arrived not from happiness but from the sea’s vast train station Police lingering in every segue to sleep Sunlit loiterers and sunken shadows harrowed by the compound interest of bad luck and the bitter shelter of private problems Like trying to sleep off a knotted shoulder only to dream all night of a knife in his back and betrayal so do rampart anxieties tint the Milky Way And the reassurances— Maybe the universe is an orphan, but it’s a wealthy orphan Maybe it’s a Ponzi scheme, but the suckers ain’t bled yet —are worse than what they assuage The sickness entrenched enough to call itself reality sees him seeing, and commences the ante-upping improvisation of a nightmare But like any insomniac he will attest that nightmares beat still more wakefulness any night So stuff that in your Buddha and bow to it
Eternity and Who to Blame
By Colin Dodds