IV

Heed not the darkened cataclysms of morning
And arise in the oppressive fallacy
Of asynchronous need,
Said the man who said strange things.
Your future has no driven desire
For the immaculate wastlings of uncommon perception
And the heterogeneous dislocation of
Fortuitous ideologies. So drop your
Battered dreams in the quagmires of wilfull absolution
And seek your neighbors’ needs.
No, we said, My Lord, help us balance
Magniloquence and altruism.
Lavish your loves with fast attention,
He pontificated, ever pedantic, and pressed on
Into the sunset of our visions.

III

immerge your curtained minds
in vertiginous equipoise and soft mild shade
said the man who said strange things.
unsanctify your meretricious tales,
destroy the inborn free-form hate and
coalesce in spite of your
malformed arrogant sophistries.
no, we said, please teach us
painless tolerance, good sir,
and we will evolve
in wisdom and significance.
wreck your blind walls
and stubborn castles
and cede your inherent
self-sufficiency,
he said because he
felt he had to
and we woke from
our daydreams
to his quick absence.

II

chuck and shackle
your fustian fortitude
said the man who said strange things
i leave you in your
primitive retromingency
and your anachronistic gallimaufries
of steadfast suppressive cataclysms.
no, we said, please help us
adjust to our blind progress.
set us right in time and context
direct our search for harmony.
mind your primal wreckage
and fluctuate your
omnigenous altruisms,
he muttered half to himself
and faded from our
myths and legends
in the wink of a wise eye.

I

sip your sordid sympathies
said the man who said strange things
i leave you to wander
on your visionless wings of ignorance
no, we said, don’t leave us; guide us
over our potholed roads
and seldom trodden ways, give us a vision.
vacillate your vacancy and
settle your vicissitudes,
he said and disappeared down
the well-traveled roads
of some other saga, and
left us to think for ourselves.