*
ON LONGINUS THE SUBLIME AND PERHAPS MILTON’S BLINDNESS
If the sublime like a whirlwind
tears everything up Longinus
then we are so sublime
as are bulldozers as is time
and the hands of toddlers
or it is a tearing up inside the mind?
And if so how do we distinguish tear
and tear and can the reader do it
or must we clutter margins with
direction but make them beautiful
with Latin and an ornate monkey
or two twining the page?
Or is the tearing up internal and does
it wreck the sight? vapors from
the stomach wringing upwards to
its maker fogging the windows
of the body that staggers before
the sublime Like a whirlwind
it is tearing everything up.
*
IT GIVES A LOVELY LIGHT
having met the other end
I have been burning, we
talk, and as it turns out
we are so like each other:
not the first, not primary,
hardly primal, never alone.
We both prefer midnight
to early morning but this
is the hour we were dealt.
Those also serve who run
through the mornings clu-
tching their head, trying
to get a cup of tea before
that great eagle day desc-
ends and snatches what-
ever thing it is you would
like to keep pocketed. This
is an upturned-pocket kind
of world, seams to daylight.
Why would you keep matches
in there. Of what use matches,
of what use candles and slim
cigarettes besides your own
self’s iridescent burn.
ILK journal 