Inside the Machine

A broken man, limping towards gnosis, club foot heavy

hunched with the weight of penance and guilt crushing spine, 

darkened uneven footsteps, dancing drunken thoughts to ground, 

to grind under heel, to dust and rust, from rust to mote,

mote to mist,  mist-like, gone, gone-like fist shattering

glass-like mirror dome, diamond shards raining down, blood drawn, 

a black brick intrusion of mind and mine, enveloping the skeleton

key in barrel, metal, oil, filed by infinity's ghost, one cage

fits all, my dreams and drams of flying, anchored in the rock bed, 

of tossed and tarnished nights , and like a bombed-out landscape

of linen and sweat, chambers or torment oozing unmelodious sounds

of cloud, causing puppets to break strings and slump on command, 

the smashed limbs of robots, swapped line dance leg dance, whirling,

never moving into eternity's empty stare,  gears grating teeth gnawing,

 sparks ... breaking the broken brain again and again, with sledge hammer

finesse and similar results time after time, powdering bones into 

grime filled angels with dirty faces full of dust and rust, a shadowy

film of dead skin, dripping and crawling from every dead smile,

                                                     that creeps and is born from within,

the club foot man is King.

Reviews

[Red Brick Keshner]

...club-footedness is quite a powerful image and experience.

[John]

A helter skelter journey towards gnosis in the purview of eternity's blank stare. It has wit, inventiveness, a lightness of touch, not settling for longer than necessary on one thought or image, which include the terrifying 'a brick black intrusion of mind' along with the droll 'sledgehammer finess'. Rhythmically adroit, it careers on the highways and byways of the mind in control, beginning and ending with the clubfooted man. He may be the poor, bare, forked creature of Shakespeare's King Lear, the ecstatic in Gerard Manley Hopkins' Gods Grandeur, or the one-eyed man in the Kingdom of the Blind.