Various

The rules religions hand down to us, here is 2008. Are they absolute moral precepts, timeless countermeasures to perennial human failings? Or are they conspicuously parochial pronouncements, the nasty strictures of bygone peoples and places, conceived in utter ignorance of how wide the world was and of what it would become – and worst of all, still revered as infallible?

And is there any ring of prescience in them? Any deference to the expanse of futures and throngs of unborn they aim to govern? Did they, in fact, so aim to govern? Or did the mindsets that created them lack the faintest apprehension – or even concern – for the alien millennia ahead? If these rules truly came from God, then why did he so specifically address himself to the lives and the psyches of those who happened to be around at the time, snubbing posterity a mere few hundred generations on – a shocking oversight for an eternal being? How are we who know of supernovae to be awed by a burning bush?

There are several lifts to choose from: the moth lift; the pitch black lift; the lift with the disfigured drummer; the meat locker lift (which you share with coldly swaying and buffeting cow carcasses); the upside down lift; the lift that only opens if you’re naked; the rain lift; the tentacle lift, and countless others.

It is churlish, with all of these options, to take the stairs.

Something occurred. What was it? No – worse – several things occurred. And I’m not talking your everyday, run-of-the garden, common or mill strains of occurrence: they occurred as a firework occurs in a dour sky, as a plop of rain in scorching desert sand. Where did they occur? - In my mind. They occurred to me alone. Alas, I didn’t write them down, didn’t grab a net to scoop the bright coruscations from the heights before they faded; didn’t pick up the wet sand before it dried. All I remember of them now is that they were worth remembering, which is nothing but a torment to recall.

Those same stalks jut from the pond/the prose of them, the thin wind-buffeted essences/tapering, going nowhere/only accidentally pointing out the Sun or Moon/ until the pond murk disgorges a larva/ that seizes this opportune ladder to the sky/shuffles up to the treasure chest/ of its chrysalis/removes its own gossamer wings.

Ode to a Toad//to flies, Hell’s mouth is cracked, clammy skin folds/unlatching with a croak and sending up/the flying flesh-pink road to collect their soul.