"To dream of baboons and periwinkles."
~ Wallace Stevens
To fall from grace, a loss / of favor, of kindness / shown, of talent bestowed,
of aptitude and skills / to pay the bills, to make / money, to make ends meet,
disenchant the dreamer / from the dream, illusions / disappear, spells broken,
remain disillusioned, / disappointed by love, / by life never-ending,
eternal universe, / time, a Möbius strip, / a Klein bottle, evolves,
a crab with claw held high / walks the length of the strip / an infinite mirror,
mirror left, mirror right, / make the crab walk the plank / on a ship lost at sea,
or space, lost amongst stars, / solar energy, light / travels the universe
faster than the fastest / object in the universe, / light encircles the strip,
binary, on or off, / one or zero, photon / or the absence of light,
astral navigation / at sea with Columbus / to the ends of the earth,
bitter as Camões, / imprisoned in Goa / for debt, later released
on his way to nowhere, / to finish a poem, / a book of his travels,
overseas he travelled, / a military man / with a fondness for rhyme,
no one but us baboons / read epic poetry / in Portuguese or Greek,
slant rhyme disenchanted / the use in formal verse, / later practitioners
abandoned all end rhyme, / accentual meter, / rigid syllable counts,
not until poetry / discovered slam break beats / in spoken-word hip-hop
did rhyme play with meter / in explosive lyrics / for the performance stage,
pretend I remember / when poetry flourished / here in America,
even if my madness / hadn't made me insane, / circling the gyroscope,
recognition never / seems to come with time served, / effort like a prison,
inside with no release, / no reward for work done, / no one appreciates
wisdom until they face / their mistakes with relief / and acceptance, not grief
inside the conscious mind, / pushed down in repression, / suppression of past acts,
none care to remember / the darkness of past days, / unfold a quilt of stars,
kindness entails kindness, / we judge, cast the first stone / against ourselves, others,
lest someone else looks back / at their life of mistakes / and accuse us falsely,
ever since I was small, / I could not help but fall, / fall down and fall from grace,
skinned my elbows and knees, / I cried ten thousand tears, / no one heard, no one cared.
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