118. Indictment

I do not understand my
gift;
judgement makes all
relative,
relevant.

All seems
bland and
weary.
Child’s enchantments
revealed as
empty.

I am happy though I am
sad
Smiling though I’m
crying;
Callous, wry, and witty
when all I feel is
hurt.

So many disappointments,
so I have learned the game:
I can play too:
let us both
say empty things

only you mean them,
and I invent them.
Quicker the lies are said
that I may retire,
observing how alone I am,
remarking the silent absurdity
of my worthless life
somehow so exalted by my
ego that

it must awake again
each day,
to produce, create;
to hope
and regret.

117. Il fiore della gioventù

Frost melts in the morning sun:
it is beginning and the
end.

Everything is just as always,
and it will be, evermore;

On the final days,
when silence looms more present on the distant fields,
there does not seem to be enough
to count the branches and their
geometry

the blades of grass
or their migrant residents

there was only time for so much
before the moment is lost and
replaced, cycling
nowhere and
evermore.

116. Zerbinetta

Callous, cold,
and full of spite:
degenerate, the
courtesan is teasing
once again…

We were all of us
Ariadne,
pining after one such
demigod

Retired
to a life of trickery, cheap wine, and
heroin:
they are all the same,
one after another,
wicked,
implacable.

It is a life of
hard tales,
lost hopes, and
splintered dreams.

Yes,
some are meant to
saunter aimlessly on a
ridiculous pedestal,
Emilia Marty in her
39th century, gazing over
blazing lights
into an audience who is
not there.