Scribes of the Unseen Life


You cannot explain to the words how to come out

as if they were stars and the stars themselves

girls in cotillion organdy, shy at first, 

then bold and overbearing,

massed on the inside of a sphere,
 
staring at you as they wheel in the ballroom, 

pin you to the center of the world.



You cannot protect the roads where dreams invade.

They slip through the ocean's light-infested hide:

eyes that stream into half-eaten hands,

eyes that empty themselves shoreward.


You cannot stop this waste of freakish beauty.

So many lost.  So many white white girls, 

drowned sparks from under the world, 

wheel out of sight or sizzle in the waves, 

half-formed creatures thrash toward the lethal light,

stumble on the threshold, 

hug the flesh dissolving in their hands 

to the blurring bones.



But those who seize the beachhead, storm the bright,

the lacy edge of them, wave's hiss, 
 
those too charming, or too hideous, 

those will not be denied.

You have no choice.  Welcome the unbidden:

debutantes, mutants, scribes of the unseen life.

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