17

He is not an Object of Terror, but Delight. Terror is our subject, not our text. If history cedes to entertainment, terror is delight. Bad translation within the same lexicon. Hand to type. Monk to press (he plays soccer in an adjacent poem). Her Alzheimer's mother calls her Angie. Another mother called for Jenny: she was mother's lover, a missing piece. The dead were objects of convenience. Sublimity is passé , except as random violence. No more crossing the Alps, even boulevards. There is no time to think after. How we get PTSD matters less than that we have it. To have is to own; to own is to grasp. I want to see this world from the scenic look-out of a spiritual text. I cannot find my way back. I am leaving the city and entering the suburbs, away from my heart. Arteries flow backwards. If delight is a small store in the banlieu, I will go there to ask for samples.

--9 January 2015