The Great Deceiver
By Brian Lucas
I will donate my head
I will uncover the seams
I will acknowledge my dust
as silver elixir
to be fed to the masses
I’ve never been more dead than now
more a product of misspent music
halted at the border
flicking seeds sent
through a blister in the wall
I plant movements
that carry all the king’s men
through a crack in the planet
where monkeys sink into
a song their fathers grew
on filaments of language
& certain birds
are mad to hunt a spectrum
of only one meaning
where handmade clouds sound
free from ligament
released beyond bounds
offering steam to relax gem
I can float here combing my hair into waterfall
I am a human fly
wings slick with telepathic goo
an archive of earth piled on my back
This is theater ...
so please assume the role of curtain
I am the director of this fuzz
a tardy imago: the result of clandestine flare
When we returned to your house
we noticed that it wasn’t there
so we built a human pyramid
without flesh
without internal radar or private song
a formation known to drain the color of black suns
and toward this stone we lean
where birds are higher
than sapphire mammatus
where we speak of things mouth-less, bare
Copyright Credit: Brian Lucas, “The Great Deceiver.” Copyright © 2019 by Brian Lucas. Used by permission of the author for PoetryNow.
Source: PoetryNow (2019)