Dan Williams

Horizontal Waterfall

Civilization stumbles through reality now,

happy to be tepid though aspiring to real warmth.

Polarized by fiction, paralyzed by contentedness,

believing it is now hated or never really adored.

Populated by powerless shadow selves, clobbered.,

colored by hope and rage, all air expelled,

bleak ambivalent minds cornered by thin voices.

 

Useless condolences of inexperience and innocence

scrolling up from the bottom, exaggerated

by the descending arpeggios of their fate.

Dried bones celebrating the skeleton of what?

Knees weak, shoulders slumped,

swords asleep in tired hands,

intelligent wipers scrubbing dry glass.

 

Descartes error; think but not necessarily am,

repeated well into monopoly.

Life and death curiously shake hands

at the horizontal waterfall of wasted time

created almost entirely by awake dreaming.

Pathetic palming, not knocking, on heaven’s door,

sleepwalking toward the pine box, slightly squinting.