ashgabat 1,2

        ASHGABAT

1.
A blinding golden Jetztzeit (thul incorrigible!)
met me at the Metro with mint julep
qualms, & if it isn’t craze-for-tulip
lemmingtide, or world-turn t’ward our dirigible
timeline, then I follow the bouncing Occam dictum

& say it’s just the latest fiction puncture
when all along our choices made fate juncture
on time & under budget. What we victim
congeries can’t grasp, while yet we fortify
ourselves with brain-glue, now, is how these games still mortify.

The Slovio myth.

2.
Balefire, from which no button eyes recuperate;
mise-en-abyme, mirror that dolls find odious:
an islander from some place named melodious
has picked up soccer, though great waves vituperate,
on this our tiny home. Conventicle ever livid

or circular firing squad, the truth is harsh
you cannot face; we wade into a marsh
chasing methane lures seductive-vivid,
long shadows of morning, digging the clayey
wakefulness of watching ash drift down Pompeii.

Chaohuan.

"And ask not why, where reason never was." --George Meredith