The Face Remained The Same

The Face Remained the Same

Thrust upon his throne,

he read his letter,

blind;

and turned the words, one with another,

in her mind:

He wept, forlorn.

The tap water hissed,

a snake in his miasmatic mist:

solemnity turned it out,

and it left the bitter sacrarium of his mind,

His very own pernicious inner blind.

With each brief tear,

a year.

He was alone.

A charted wilderness of boundless boundaries:

Driven, he would wander,

until at razors edge,

life would reveal a death.

We toss our own coin, an epoch or an epitaph,

heartily he would laugh;

The bastion, his spirited whole,

the only true soul.

For laughter offers all a gate,

to meliorate, this ambivalent

and capricious fallacy, we honor as reality.

Heartily he laughed,

a Brahmans smile.

Yet his face remained the same.

© Richard Michael Parker 1987