There Were Warnings

we gnash with a mouthful of broken teeth; eat
each other whole. bellies with no room
for remorse; not instinct, but ingrained, inbred

crushed like statuary amidst unhewn stone,
the gap between what marks the spectrum’s ends.
mottled bleedings inhabit muddied pictures,

otherwise straight lines, any definitive scratched
into lenses; these cameras covered red swirled
on hands, on faces, on everyone: pray

and find solace in the end of the world if
this empire crumbles surely it is the last
and greatest

Bureaucrat As Religious Scribe

it’s an expressionless face in a
three-walled hole of reflection

druids believed that
writing compromised secret

mass long lost to desire,
unresponsive as trained

and memory; for all their work,
only Roman accounts of them

that’s how I imagine him
definitely a him

survived, whatever that’s worth
when I write, my memory

he, who will pass on the orders
to begin the immolation

failed; will the only traces
in fifteen hundred years

any traces of us that we don’t
keep ourselves, gone

of any of this come
back to light as the hand

emperors never light the fire
it would be unconscionable

cuffed stiffly at the desk
producing reports and documentary

but the ashes on an unthinking
lackey’s smooth fingers

satisfied, however, so when the works
of the eternal volunteer elapse

grant a pass in the eyes
of the gods, the state, enduring

without conscious notice the fury
rages inside, demanding to be acknowledged