THE BLACK MATTER

The Black Matter

The Black Matter is confined to its cube
The Black Matter cannot be controlled or directed
The Black Matter can only be imprisoned
The Black Matter communicates with me
But only through the penitentiary labyrinth
Heat-pipes of my imagination
And even then my summoned strength is insufficient
To process it in more than small jigsaw fragments
Needlepoint details
The aerodynamic flutter of fabric
Through the long and fatal fall

But the Black Matter empowers me
To talk of the events that dare not speak their name.
Sinister? I would say so.
But do my enemies experience the same anguish?
I would hope so
Yet I fundamentally doubt it
Such pain has been edited,
Excised and censored
From their pastel dictionary of Newspeak
And that, of course, is why they are my enemies
Turning in their narcissism
And suit-of-lights illusions of power
They deny the very existence of the Black Matter
But they will face it
They will face it head-on and hard
When the power to the controlling cube finally fails
And the Black Matter is loosed to its terrible freedom

The above represents something of a breakthrough. For over a year, for reasons that are known to some but otherwise I don’t care to discuss, I have been unable to write poetry. Fortunately I had such an untouched backlog of work that it wasn’t a crisis, and there was always new material for shindig, reading, or insurrection. But now, like some vintage panhead Harley, the machine turns over and I will ride it again wondering where it will take me this time – to Nirvana, maybe Hell, or just to the nearest tavern.