My Life in the Pretense

It's a slapdash case he makes, many ways,

A kind of zoopraxiscopic regime,

Ultramodernism antiquated:

Enchant the animals; let them converse,

Not so much the woods as the air burning,

Oxygen, the fuel that gives death its zest

And life its headlong rush into anguish.

And then the phoenix in the garden speaks.

"His dreams plan to test if it was his case,

Without resistance to the wilderness.

It's a jungle of mild green flames out there,

Lapping at the crusts of a blue-veiled world."

I am not kidding. I am not playing.

I am earnestly assessing the end

Of the becoming, all four hooves in air,

The fire from splayed leaves in circular night.