TO BE SURE

TO BE SURE

rejoice;
beware!

something
out there

a new
continent
       as yet
undiscovered?

unnamed
asteroid;
         new
planet?

something which
we found
      found us

bound to change
                everything

bringing, to be sure,
greatness and goodness

for
all mankind!

rejoice!
       beware

something out there
          already, to be sure

new planet
new continent

near
     as it is far
             

BACK TO

BACK TO

I was back to
the futured
to my
old university

one of those ribald
dreams where
the basic narrative comes
courtesy of
capitalist content creator

and there I was
both ancient alumnus
and yet feeling
the total freshman

all my higher degrees
revoked
    on grounds of
relevancy

struggling in the climate
contrasts to make
         my way both
upstream
and downstream

intellectually frigid, frozen
broken
       desperate to
if not remake
at least
reshape
    the wheel

whilst the Sun scorching brains
leering contemptuously
through
    the stratosphere

protoype for every
      god Emperor, every golden
King
    and, yes, indeed
I am afraid to add, every
trivial
    trivial Dean

as I made my way through
the panoply of departments
renamed
    where not structured entirety

every theory
  so local, limited, narrow
yet
    same same-same

not of the intellect
but of ideology

servile, appeasing, without
a mind
        to contemplate thought
of difference, thought
                    of resistance

triumph of appearance
      and death of shame

back futured, back dated
                 limbo lateral
shifted
what else should I say?

BUT THE SYMMETRY IS PERFECT

BUT THE SYMMETRY IS PERFECT

and now we
know that horror

the depth and extent of
its shadow

cast forward in time
for over eighty years

but time
future and past

it is all meaningless
relative

is thing of moment and instant
running forward and back

causality, karma, punishment
for those beyond time
who escape the limits
of our bound
       wisdom
                 racing
helter-
skeltet to collapse, inescapably
fast-erroding

know that shadow forward
is also
   shadow back

and your horror now
is your horror then

we see
    no sense, no logic,
but the symmetry: this is perfect