Empires, part 2

                         I

I remember the summery mornings

with talk of knowledge -lay fragile in the arms

of the ancients- it dripped

through cracks in the cloudless canopies

growing within the grassy knolls of my memory--

to be of the known:

                                                           to advance-

I long to walk the pathways of

pathogen leaves in the leaving remains our fleshy ancestors,

to be in the bounds of the to be in abound;

of armchairs glistening

                                 comforts of thoughts

                                 riddled in contemplation:

of painted rainbows soaked

with the ever-present gloss of fresh rain.

But, then again, that is in my mind a Europe

borne not of the freedom of running

past the baker's early crack of a smile or

the taste of our freshly dried culture.

It was, as I cannot ignore, of the burning of angels,

incandescent in the night; of children

taut and tired, behind whips

of the stone shimmer darkness.

We were a scruple; thrown away

in the days of god howling knights,

as our liberties were thrown at bay

to be replaced with Hell’s frights.

                         II

That was the past; past the runaway

shores of Portsmouth, past my memories;

through our culture, dyeing the lore like creeper.

It shimmered of green, knotting the air

        --a bastion of the last to ignore the

quicksilver of choice. To lay as a burden

in the trembling fingers prying at my hair.

But it blurs- O!

Soror of the sea, orbus of the earth: you remain,

to advance- ad infinitum!