Advice for Ulysses

(from Circus by Moonlight)

to calm passion
or lull the mindset
we will initiate another
kind of chaos
which will snub and slight
the understanding man

the novice will sit
in his seat
as presiding officer
of idiocracy

prefer me
before my peers
and i will tell you how
to make yourself
stinking rich
as if by
laughable happenstance

act the upstart and
speak as a bigot
but,
like all artless actors
look inflated
and temporize
the name of insolance
and pride

Obstacles to the Heart

nothing is so pernicious
as the charismatic contagion

an embalming fluid, this blackdamp
of cold light and scattered countenance

the unconscious reflex
of our shameful spewing

be there any frigid agony
in it, or torpid bashfulness

while the hypothermia in the entrails
will make the melancholy atomic

frostbitten wildwood
of trust and confidence

deadweight of thorns making an
all-out effort to bloodstain the margins

a signet from long past
yet so painfully contemporary