We're Missing Orphans and Outcasts of All-Swallowing Heaven

A general feature, ridiculous and mysterious,

A prediction that is not a prediction, something went wrong.

It is my intention to astonish you all, although none

Is likely to be impressed any time before I am gone.

Everyone deals with pity. Empathy fears being pitied.

During last year's war, our memories sifted through the rubble.

An observation tower sat on the village perimeter,

And we tried to remember to keep everything in past tense.

Ally the human ability to think narratively

With human capacities for boredom. Inevitably,

Increasingly elaborate clocks were invented to smash

With increasingly elaborate time-delay explosives.

Tempus redux. The knotted arrow flew in all directions

But the eye could only sight along the line uncoiling

And see there's something missing. There's everything and there's nothing,

But even with everything and nothing there's something missing. Dark

Is the metaphor handiest to a vision-addled ape.

Dark is what we notice, what we do, inwardly, outwardly.

In central New Jersey's potato fields, the dragon's black tongue,

Barbed, licked us lightly, like babies, arrowing from toxotes.