The Most Important Attempt of All

And what had we decided? Oh,

a great number of things – this was

the problem, this out-stretching

of our wills past time and the very skin

that should keep us well-enough

informed of ideas like limits.

If only we had not evolved past

the days of ideas: action

was what mattered, everything

else just cloud and waiting, and we

were done with waiting.

Some ideas hung around like ghosts

or model homes, unsubstantial things

that we assumed were real or else

were always this light and fragile.

One was revolution. Another was

justice. We wore them like the robes

of kings we had never seen except

in great myths and we sung their

liturgies as if we knew exactly

what we meant but at the end of the day

only our throats were sore: the blood

was still threading the course of our

bodies, the bones were yet intact,

and our homes shown like lacquered

paper, glowing warm and incandescent.

Nothing was lost except for what we

had not lost. And that, too, was gone.

Tomorrow we will be angry – or how

could we remain so few seconds before

every exhalation? We will pretend to live

in brighter days where ideas enfleshed

the spare forests we will devastate

in our quiet studies and we will call

our imagination passion, and later,

the most important attempt of all.

And in a magnificent frenzy of every

tension scraping its plate with every

other brittle mockup of emotion

we will strive and yearn and finally

beneath the stars we still see through

our own putrefaction we will climax

and fall asleep.