Monday, November 14, 2016



Marc Vincenz
marc.l.vincenz@gmail.com



Illuminated

and the gods themselves were nameless, natureless, futureless …
                        —Enuma Elish 

A transfiguration—
new forms before
agricultural revolution
in the everywhen
of a lost paradise:

a tree, a mountain,
a pole, a ladder
embodying the sacred
& profane—before
they are brought down

& that epiphany
of a hidden source
when people wanted
naught from the sky
then, all that wrongdoing

but also the vitality
of a quintessential connection,
the gods of the stratosphere. Did you
not yearn to rise above
where myth & ritual

are embalmed?
Catharsis, Dionysus, bringer
of sweetness toothed, bringer
of light dimmed.
May your sweetness

be the footsteps
of our desire.
How do you blast
your trumpet

with that bumblebee
bouncing off walls?
What a beneficent god!
A liminal figure
bringing wisdom 

from the very breast of nature.
& the wine & nectar flow
like flames staring
into the eyes
of a civilization ignited

by the substance of Empire.
& the smoke:
a five-headed century
follows her red dust

for two thousand years.





Break in the Battle


Man and unwavering
word in a never-
ending revolution.

To be lost in a forest
with a broken
spear in hand

and that fading
fanatical cackling
echoing across treetops.

The air heavy
with broken bone;
even here, inside,

encircling the fingertips
of pine, in-a-word,
to carry on,

and finally, in the empty
fucking reaches,
to absolutely know it.





Forty Feet High from Here


Tough choice.
Hullaballoo.
Scribble.
Rarely intelligent.
You know those simple stares
that cover up the mind.
Democracy is an entire force.
We have risky takes
on how fragile the concepts,
shedding the wrong answers.
Fearing who’s
listening could cause
a psychic collapse.
Shoot straight.
Scribble.
Bugaboo.
Repose.





A Revolutionary Commander Addresses His Troops


And so to war again to crush
those rabble-rousers. As the General

has often said, there’s always another.
Discontentment must be flushed out—

extinguished like the red foxes
chattering beneath the bridge.

The good General, bless him, might,
in all his mercy, forget—when jocular

and jovial among brass bands and streamers—
that it serves no great purpose

to feed the living when they’ve already
been pronounced stone dead.





Sometimes Someone Votes No, but I’ve Never Seen It


we vote green
if we agree and
red if we don’t
it’s all
tallied up
by that man
over there
(with the square glasses)
churned evenly
in a clear plastic pot
so all can see
there can’t be
manipulation
of any kind

what could be more democratic than that?




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