[Rick Mullin]

A crown, which I trust is acceptable as it's one poem. Because of its length I set it apart in the Deep End.


Expression (Sunset) or The Death of Venus

The products of combustion are contained
in brickwork vaults designed by engineers
adept at solitude, their fire explained
in darkness. Our intrepid gondoliers
inspect the morning from a high balloon
recording trace emissions in a code
reengineered from signals in the war.
No reason for the Peaceful Valley to explode.
In fact, we needn’t worry anymore
about the Human Epoch, which is soon
or maybe later to dissolve in light.
The constellation Pisces will unwind
its net of epithelia and kite
in two directions leaving us behind.
The pond was deathly still this afternoon.

The pond was deathly still this afternoon
as William pulled his shopping cart behind
a backstop in the park. A powder moon
accompanied his daydream in the blind
and covered up his song like no tomorrow.
They say it never comes. Yet there’s a scene
in William’s history that proves he’s way
ahead and wrapped in polyethylene.
Tomorrow is a glass on yesterday
where nothing happens. We’re inclined to borrow,
singing hardship forward in a line
with gladness, twining elements of drool
and drama that inscribe a 69,
a Yin and Yang, a chiral molecule
impervious to all the moon can sorrow.

Impervious to all the moon can sorrow,
frozen mountains slam their wood-crack strains.
All color drained, gone even from the dayglow
factories that burned once and their trains
that throttled through the county night and day.
A river choked with surplus nurdles plies
the fallen forest like a mindless snail.
The sun appears, but always in disguise,
and disappears. We’re startled by a pale
hypocrisy that jumps across the clay
to hobble back into the shadow twist
and bracken fall. Consult the lying stars
regarding our domain. Consult the mist
that folds them in obscurity with Mars
and Venus, who were always in the way.

When Venus, who was always in the way,
committed suicide, her arrow boys
became undisciplined. Their hate held sway;
green eyes gone lightless as their feathered toys
collected dust. Nothing slowed them down.
The god of combat, in his bleeding cape
of mercury and sulfur, had a war
to angle, and a trial to escape
(coincident convenience), and a score
to settle, and a gathering in town
of arrow boys. The table’s set. Regard
his vanguard in the gutter and a staff
of banners flapping with his limp petard.
There is no ending to the epitaph
he needs to write. He needs to write a crown.

He needs to write a sixteen-sonnet crown
of sonnets to revive an atrophied
imagination. He needs to paint a clown
in order to recharge his palette, plant a seed.
Ontogeny might recapitulate
phylogeny. It’s happened once before.
Today, the page defines an empty frame,
a canvas primed and white; the killing metaphor,
an outcome predetermined. All the same,
he rises, careful not to saturate
the grays, and draws a bass drum for the boom
of brave Pierrot. He’ll stand him tall beside
the plaque that reads Cogito, ergo sum.
Accordion and mandolin provide
A melody that carries on 'til late.

A melody that carries on 'til late
will likely nibble, as Ouroboros,
a tail familiar with the grass; a great
awakening to visions of morose
encounters in the past. A balance sheet.
Reminders of an echoed reckoning
of glory days in ashed recrimination.
Aubade. Augoode, or ugly, beckoning
like Ahab in the motion picture adaptation.
O, the worm returns, a Hollywood conceit.
God help us. We won’t bother You again.
Just get us out of this, Who put us here,
and let us be. Selah, Shalom. Amen.
Or write us headlines for a winning year
to read, resist, forget, recast, repeat.

Recast, resist, forget, rewrite, repeat
the Protocols of Zion while the God of War
renews his contract with a non-compete.
He plays the numbers at a liquor store,
returning home to phone in his report,
though lately he’s been interviewed on Zoom
by operatives who cover up his game
for networks on the left. His livingroom
suggests he’s off the wagon and the shame
is amplified by questions from a court
reporter in New York. His latest book,
in garish product placement, fills a quarter
of the screen. He acts if he’s somehow off the hook
when asked of the condition of his daughter.
“War,” he pleads, “is endless. Life is short.”

Remember brutish, nasty, poor and short?
Well that’s the guy who got us here, correct?
An agent of the Age of Light, a sort
of demagogue whose ironies reflect
grave error through a veil of time release.
Who made him God? The men of modern science
in cahoots with industry and government.
The hoi polloi react in big defiance
and its outrage kind of cracks the firmament.
The cracking mountains slam, the southward geese
describe another airborne letter: Q.
Our gondoliers recalibrate the glass
that measures complements of CO2.
The little guy yells, “Blow it out your ass.”
Sing War is Over if You Want It. Peace.

The Corpse of Love sings “If you want it, peace
comes dropping slow.” Beside her rings the snake
that laid her low. Below, the blood and grease
repel in tinted jewels and rainbow flake,
an image in a leaded window, stained,
desiring only fire (see Stanza One
to find the definition). William sleeps
beneath his cart, protected from the sun
that burns a pathway through the park and keeps
the promise of a paradise regained.
The networks in their perfect opposition
fill the hour with a tired spin
as engineers review the composition
of a brickwork archbasilica wherein
the products of combustion are contained.
.