The Secretary of State • And So Here We Are
The Secretary of State
Is calcifying:
The head already
Almost turned
To stone,
The mouth pinched
Into a tiny hole
Out of which hiss
The dark orders,
His eyes but slits
See only a long red
Line at the horizon.
In the middle
Of the night,
Every night,
He sits in the grand
House expecting
The same call,
When the cruelty asks,
Why can’t you sleep
And he answers
In a rocky wheeze,
Because I know the body count.
And So Here We Are
When the dark ages began no one really knows;
maybe the first time one man took from another
by deception and force and revenge of theft
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was unleashed like a wild wind that couldn’t
stop or be stopped. And still it persists,
the undying spectacle of brute force striking
across continents like lightning at the
heart of all things. The scraping of tectonic
plates the sound of this undoing, the shared
criminality and cruelty rumbling over the dawn
bursting forth in eternal flame. City by city,
century after century the urge and need marches
on, railing against caution, raging after more
of its own dark blood, once again in this
Paul Lojeski
