Catalyst

Suffer me in holy water …

Somewhere near Daemon’s Ridge,
Timeon weighs his essential salts, counts
his ducks, geese, chickens, douses himself

in the anointing oils he pilfered last night
from the Temple of Unknown Saints.

In Escallia, he spreads his essential crystals
on Dolmetsch Strasse, down Sigismund’s Byway,
by way of the canal, scattering some into the water,

some on the shoes of passers by, some across
a freshly painted balustrade.

In a liminal fashion, he leaps
cobblestone to cobblestone; a hooded robe
passes uttering devotions of love

into the hedgerows; a mouse twitches,
weaves, leaps, vanishes.

Timeon too wishes to disappear into a hole
or a hedgerow – salt is scattered to save the soul;
he believes rock crystal

from the Roof of the World,
will give him his best chances in the Bardo.

Somewhere in South Caldo,
Tangled in the Fronds

Let them come and get me …

The Cult of the Second Daughter was not
officially sanctioned, yet she was permitted,
even in the dankest, most rancid basements

where rats lived with fleas and fleas with flagrancy;
or, to put it the way of the Supreme Leader,

she was like a cold sore that passed from lip to lip.
The valley was miles below, and seemed to spread
in all vivisections. That morning the streets were cool

and gently warming, and the pilgrims kept arriving
with their handfuls of offerings: dry rice and mangos,

wildflowers and plastic bags filled with sand
from the Igorian Sea; and sometimes, the lucky
Priestess, who poured the forever sand to count

the eternal grains of history, which seemed to her
like the millet she had fed her nations for centuries.

Timeon was among the worshipers that fateful morn,
in his new century. He too had washed his feet
in the holy river, despite knowing it was con-

taminated with effluents and discharges
somewhere close to its glacial birth.

Overhead the clouds darkened, and a cool breeze
swept through square where all the pilgrims
were congregated. Suddenly the trees rattled

and shuddered, Y birds took to the air, headed
toward the mountains; then the rains came … .

A bloodhound enters the scene here.
They call him Droplet, he is a decoy for the Supreme Lizard.
He strides toward the Second Daughter, howling

in the pouring rain. The pilgrims cheer: Matter
created by anti-matter, light created by anti-light.

Data Drawn Through Light

Artificial intelligence, artificial evidence …

Data, known in her foremost
human form as evidence,
knows how to stage a crisis

and shepherd misinformation
to her best advantage.

A refugee leaves the building.

An apparition materializes.

A word begets the audience.

Which word might you ask?
Spiritual, elemental almost,

and nothing short of divine
and ethereal in nature? – ergo
intangible yet deeply felt?

In the crowd, I atone alone.