[Bill Dyes]

John:

This poem (as I think many of yours do) utilize an uncanny technique of circular breathing.
It both inhales and exhales in a single long tone descending through levels of self-deception and lies.
I feel the great breath of air quietly taken in at the beginning and yet more air taken in at "whispering they're grateful".
And then words are delivered in succesive rushes as their eyes move to the floor, beneath the floor to the cellar and then beneath the cellar.
Then small breaths are slyly taken in to deliver the "still alive searching fish", the "narrow river below the cellar floor" and listing what are in those "boxes of things".
And that same breath is finally expended as we are lost utterly beneath a false sky with counterfeit stars.
A devastating effect.

Bill