When it comes to belief,
the peregrine in us digs to quarry
and inhabit a future tense,
to become at some later date,
final belief in the unresolved,
consoled by those who have scraped
the filaments of this zone
to extend a faithful nod
to such labors, even if we remain
without voice, passed over in our time,
canonic to ourselves but to no one else,
in a room reading poems to a few friends
who in time will comment and layer
this esperanto with the narrative
these words strain to incite
that our belief is still to be said,
still to heard, still to be felt.

When it comes to disbelief,
the aporias in us stretch
from silence to silence,
mouth erased from the face
without trick nor surreal gag
to reek havoc on common sense,
even if uncommon, rare,
like a split second of clarity
certain to decide
that there is nothing outside,
no argotics of divinity,
no resolute primacy
from which all come,
but rather an accident,
thrown from the thrown,
where there is not nothing
but the something that is,
is just there, without intent,
not here, not now, not then.

Defiance is neither rogue nor dead,
not a protest nor a strike
to leave wounded the ones in need—

it lives on burdens of continuing—

it struggles with what is not measured,
to speak another day
with a voice that is no longer ours.

A clear and present faith-leap
for the past, in case it counts,
though it did not happen that way,

is strange to no one who plays by the rules,
consigns firsts and lasts and dictates
the middle portions which hold up,

and what if, once a leader, admired
and resolute, a model to be esteemed
with portions of the story translated in time,

transforms into someone to be cherished,
solid and strong and compassionate
through the slow drift of everyday,

never prepared enough for regret,
already a painted frontispiece
of a story folding in, fixed as soon

as this one ends, unknowingly, we are
who decide to stop paying attention,
only thinking of the way it was.

Link the masters of mix to spin and watch
infotainment tune opinion that segues between antacids,
hamburgers and fitness centers to the cleared particular
of a sport utility on a mountain road at dusk.

United we stand in the limbo of derision,
rotten with cliches that have spread like a virus
through the nerve centers of intimacy, saying
don't tread on me or we'll annihilate a culture

and spread rumors that it existed only to remind us
that entropy plagues progress and must be stopped
to prevent recidivism from spoiling the wonder
of an instant classic. The sychophants

are on parade, calm and holy serious with intent,
edged in reach of a plan absent from policy
for thirty years. Inert routine and pettiness
are lifted from the pleroma of malaise and wars

of omission for a bold groupthink, archetypal,
against the troglodytes the security council
spent a generation creating for just this purpose.
The then of yesterday is here tomorrow and tomorrow

is an empty premise seen in the bright flag-littered
now and ever after now to the perfect now to set
the stage for an era of crass pointing and suspicion
simplified still dead or alive, on-going with a grand

plan to separate and target and starve and reinvest.
They say personal liberties are a luxury we can no longer
afford and afford affords no slippage, no gray matter
nor sublime exegesis lending the drab of everyday

its morsel of beauty. Personal liberty has always been a thorn,
fined down to seem less sharp but sharp nonetheless
and always there but dull lately, almost without pain
and therefore almost tolerable then annoying to the mass

production of consent. No more. The epicenter is elusive.
The enemy, chimerical. Could be one of us on Main Street
or one of them bunkered in desert rock? We'll never know.
This is the point, the modus vivendi, the momento mori.

They say be comfortable and entertained around the campfire
of television. The deed is being queried, so remain alert
and report irregular activity. Go about your business, shop,
travel and shop again to sift and winnow through want.

Be proud of your allegiance to the lukewarm middle
or centrist shaft to be sunk in the strata of weather
and sports. We are not subtle and declare
that freedom is in peril. We labor to oblige

our God-given right to transform the world into one
language so there can be neither accord nor conflict
but a given set of lexical conditions acceptable
within limited ideas and hopes. Imagination,

says God to Noah, is the problem. Limit it and limit
the reach of elision which harbors silence and in that silence
the only chances we have at identity and invention
beyond the sociopathology of commodified

words and behavior. To whom do we speak we word
laborers trusting too much in words but still trusting in something?
We speak to the undeclared middle that could be swayed
either way. We speak to those who cleave to the human

and take a step back from the frenzy of pace and reaction.
We speak as listeners to the longings of a heart-centered life
and imagine a homeland on the inside first, a uniqueness
of voice. The single cherished person we all are.