Eternity and Who to Blame

From a confused man
feuding with a seabird on an empty beach
blossoms this dream of eternity
and who to blame 
 
The thing he’d escaped there to escape
sculpts the obstacle, paces the time
selects the near-necessities perpetually withheld
shapes the faces rites and escapades
that rise from the sands 
 
He arrived not from happiness
but from the sea’s vast train station
Police lingering in every segue to sleep
Sunlit loiterers and sunken shadows harrowed
by the compound interest of bad luck
and the bitter shelter of private problems
 
Like trying to sleep off a knotted shoulder
only to dream all night of a knife in his back and betrayal
so do rampart anxieties tint the Milky Way
 
And the reassurances—
                                        Maybe the universe is an orphan, but it’s a wealthy orphan
                                           Maybe it’s a Ponzi scheme, but the suckers ain’t bled yet
                                                                                                                   —are worse than what they assuage
 
The sickness entrenched enough to call itself reality
sees him seeing, and commences
the ante-upping improvisation of a nightmare
 
But like any insomniac he will attest
that nightmares beat still more wakefulness any night
So stuff that in your Buddha and bow to it