Hieronymus

I sit, and time sits with me,
the crossing sun sliding
	high and giving a cold
	pale light casts
soft shadows on my floor.

The man on the telly
	is talking Japanese
	and shitake mushrooms -
things I will never do.

The world these people live in
	is parallel but at
	the other edge of the universe
it has so little relevance.

Here, you sleep, upstairs,
	quiet after another human
week of time subsides.

And what is there left to us
	after exits and disappearances:
	after blood and knives -
(the small treasured scenes
lodged so deep you cannot
resurrect them).  There is

space where they were:
	dark matter, unseen
	eddyings and movement
our five senses cannot show.

I did not see you go -
but my world, cracked, deep in,
	all of the absent moments
	when the heart split -
there was no mending it.

Things are broken and unmade
in this creation of confusion
and alarm:  we live
	a Bosch painting
	every day
and there is no word for it
	this place
that drowns in words.

Hectic and loud are our hours
	assailed ears: this is full
	technicolor living
to cover the obvious
stretching darkness all around
	and the silent answer
	to our 'why'.  We need

to turn our heads away,
appalled at what truly is.

If we looked at it,
full-face, it would transfix us
in paralysis.

Better to head-off hard
and loud, consume, consume,
	all the rubbish and inanity
	all the pills and booze we can
to dull the pain.

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