unpunctuated tercets ending with haiku


at a loping gait we catch up
with the subject of this sentence
the third millennium

a tertiary parenthesis
playing bumpercars
with its brothers or possibly

the third of those monkey statues or then again it could be
the smokebound eastern seaboard
of a triptych by Hieronymus Bosch

you may notice our voices echoing
when we speak inside the hill
blown up to build this place

this peaceful feeling
is the kirlian residue
of that thirty million year old stone

(breath)

we are divining our future
in the vermicular calligraphy of the sun
dried night crawlers on the sidewalk

studying our past
in the mating patterns of raptors and the mourning
doves nesting outside our window

wishing we were hollow
boned and alate fertile as these smug
birds returning in an unseasonable spring

(exhalation)

according to prevailing theory
the planet is a pirate ship
manned by chaos finest contraptions

a loose knit crew
flaunting the second law of thermodynamics
exchanging high fives and piña coladas

while they commit mass suicide as art
poke holes in the ionosphere
make swiss cheese of the protective force field above them

while they raze the trees
that breath the gas that blows the bellows
which fires the coals

of life on a ball that chance built
or again this could be
all by design like

smooth rivers washing
all of our sorrows down to
oceans made of tears