An epiphany of history
A bloody tear, I fear,
The momentary blindness
Of a sunshine daydream;
Of what life could’ve been.

Instead we have
the normal crucifixions
the splatters of human brains
all over underground trains.

In my beginning is my end,
the starting point for music and poetry and art,
the gulags & the camps & massacres & the tarts
that stretch from Manchester to Lahore to Orlando
passing on the terrible travesties,
of the suras of the Quran and Talmud

This falsity spread from place to bloody place
from time to bloody time.
we need old words, older connections, the oldest ways
to pass this time of thoughtless days;
& so to  solve the sad geographies
of an unresolved philosophy.

Marcus Aurelius taught us, not so-long ago,
not to feel exasperated or defeated or despondent
because our days aren’t packed with wise and moral actions.
but to struggle back up when we fall
 to celebrate behaving like the merely humans
we seek to be:
capable of a courage and honesty
 far beyond our measly expectations.