Damnable Beast
purveyor of old hearts seeking
some final importance:
I was there,
said a word, saw what it was.
I was sad/kind/futile.
No.
The cataclysm arched a decade tall.
All of us plunged when it crashed.
The worthy among us gunned down.
The rest of us tortured
skin by skin
to our resignation.
We struggled to hold
his rent, soaring wings;
shoved unprotected edges
frantically back together.
Wept as we cradled
embers in our vacant hands.
You callously watched
Foster bleeding alone
in the Bowery; Lennon collapsing
on the floor of the Dakota; young
Shakar empty life onto a Vegas street.
He was one more destroyed
in your grand American
slaughter of poets.
We heard your shadowy
whispers. We knew that you swayed
the truth, while we could never
take home and fuck
“only” the astonishing,
even if the man’s smoke
retched from out pillows,
even when his splattered words
raked bitterness under our nails —
even after we recognized
the future closing over his eyes.
Why do you bring no mercy, Beast?
We scorched revolution
into our palms.
From his ashes
we will summon
flames.
— from The Scent of Water on Mirrors
brief salvage 