Continua Cogitatio

			
To have a tongue is to be a rogue
Whose conscience comes too soon.
Halfway to the mark, in the throes of murder,
The hand outstretched, the dagger gripped,
And the assailed breathing their last breath.
There is no haven, no sanctuary
For the willful taken by regret.
It is only with the thunder’s crack
That a terrible storm is known
Though it has brewed for hours and hours
In vicious meditation; the itch
Having possessed its victim, lets fly
A torrent of action that sates without
Satisfaction, for the nail reveals
The bloody tissue whose irritation
At the reflexive hand spits foul
And spurns the attempt.
 
Oh, but what trouble this is, what a puzzle
to have at one’s disposal a whip
so taught, so full of potential anguish,
ire, that I, the weakest of men
might with lethargy and disinterest
Undo the time-bound trap and let fly
a lash that might, might – there is the rub –
severe the heavenly bonds that keep this world
suspended. What trouble, what misfortune;
what burden this is to be the one who knows,
aye, knows so well the possibility.
Without thought there could be, and yes there is,
the ability to abandon thought,
disregard virtue, and let fly a stream
of words whose shadows do not appear
to the will nor to any mindful thing.
This is the burden, this is the trouble,
this is the force of time, for time requires
no action; as a river it pushes
action, forces hands, and threatens to drown
with disinterest those who might have thought to
swim but did not swim enough to think that
they are free of exhaustion’s grip.
 
I can do nothing but hope to weave
a net so wide as to hope to capture
all the world with a single cast.
I cannot premeditate the throw.
All that remains open to me
is to weave as weavers will:
to weave until my hands are bloody bones
whose fingers are but memories
to the knots they have tied.
 
You are an obstinate, ossified man,
whose memory is like that of the day;
it happens but its magic has long faded.
You do not recall, nor can you,
nor will you will that which is so needed.
As such, I feel the need to use
repetitive force, the very same
as the winds that blow from the north and south.
They being of similar ilk
in that they do blow;
the one bringing the cold of winter
and the other the rising sun
of a hot, humid, horrible summer day,
you will know both and learn to loathe the whistle
of the wind of your lungs.
 
Aye, I can weather these tongues. There is hope yet
the flames may be quenched.
For I, in being, in choosing to be,
in rejecting the possibility
of ending that which will inevitably undo me,
have a double vision, am twice the wiser.
For I see hell, and it is bleak;
it is dark, lit only by the flicker
of a flame whose heat I can feel even now.
Oh, prophetic sage, these shadows lean familiar
by recollection’s act.
But I, leaping from the gallows,
will bear the burdens, the curse, the temptation,
for evil in such a way,
in such a way,
as to make the exit an entrance,
the well a tower,
the foxhole a pulpit,
the grave a hearth.
No, I will bear this hell on earth.