meditations on an office chair washed up on the bank of the Thames

the payment of debts burned
the palace to the ground--
left a mess to clean,
and from the ashes, ostentation
drove some insane,

killed others.

Building the past anew
and a future in which victory reigns,
slowly stifled the life out of its people--
replaced in edifices,
because those will live on.
And when they are decaying--
harrowed by the narrow escapes
a bulldog pulled off--
and when they are decaying
in those edifices will rest their pride,

not in anything alive.


And now, Neptune sits, tired,
his trident, battered and useless by his side.
Restless on his throne,
he remembers days of old,
years ago when his vitality
was never questioned,
his power never threatened.
But Jupiter has come into his own,
the young impetuous brother--
now large and sprawling
calling the thunder at his whim.



The craggy rocks that break the waves
slowly dissapate away
at the perpetual ebb and growth
of the tide's pace
and new coasts are made.

A solitary office chair-- in such a state
of decay that it took investigation
to make anything of its past life--
lay in the muck on the bank.
The gulls flitted around it, looking
for food in its skeleton.
i paused-- waiting for the phoenician
with coins in his eyes
to come whisper to me:
"it is time."
The cold ached down my back,
tightening my muscles as it passed.
The time had come
years ago.

i am here now.

it began to rain,
and the soot ran into
the rust stains as
i marched through
rainbowed puddles
that streaked the spectrum
of light across my shoes.

how trivial, how abused.

From Neptune's Blue to Mars's Red--
Jupiter's Purple conspicuously missing,
and the office chair still off to my left,
and the sky around us still misting.