Look at me with wide open eyes.
Know that I am not as I appear.
I never did mind the darkness,
Even though it frightens me so.

Sometimes, I fool even myself
Into thinking that I search for answers.           
                                             ­      
The truth is something more
Than I ever will display.

SATOR
AREPO
TENET
OPERA
ROTAS

And I awaken.

I speak for him,
I speak though him.

It does not matter the reason.

Never, never will I leave.

There was a crystal chalice
From which I used to drink.
There was a set of pricipals
On which I used to think.

And once the door is opened
The words begin to flow.
I am his brother, partner, lover.

I am the summate of his fears.

I am the solvant of his tears.

Sometimes all you have is yourself.

Sometimes all he has is me.

I make the decisions,
And take the actions
That are too difficult for him.

There are times I haved saved his life,
But I should never be mistaken for what I am not.

My venom is toxic.

The majestic days of Czars and Sultans
with their immaculate royalty

and those of Barons and Khans
brimming with stainless primacy

have long since gone.

All their embellished repositories
of capital, jewelry and gallant armies
stand looted, ravaged and plundered.

The struggling proletariat of those times
with their humdrum lives, rife with strife
have also bitten the dust

      expired, forgotten, crumbled

since days beyond recall.

Now we, the successors and heirlooms
live on with kindred joys and glooms

as communities, creeds and nationalities

recklessly defending close-held foxy illusions
of defunct oneness or mythical deities.

The more tolerant among us even feel dignity
in misplaced, romantic nationalism(s)
and mostly off-the-mark, drifting democracies.

❋

But this time or that
summate a few more gimmicks or subtract,
all we have gifted ourselves
are some arbitrary lines on the map

slashing the earth to pieces
then claiming its wiggly, volcanic geographies
as slices of ever-dodging Elysium
enshrined in fragile master-bluffs
of precarious, cut-throat politics.