A New Hot State

Those last few minutes to the hour
Are the slowest to go
Wine in the glass
Chasing down the clockhands

Thoughts of a future
Without science fiction
Only the telos
Of science fact

The first American city has been destroyed
But no one seems to have noticed

When will I eat the marigold with you?
Unpeel the fiction to reveal
Theatre
Apply the delineation of narrative
To our collision of random
Make the tale last
To the death of one
And perhaps beyond?

I challenge in the pattern
Or all those who choose love
I challenge the cosmos
To thwart me again
As I rebuild story
From these tattered
Wounded elements of plot.

Cohere in the space
Before termination
Refuse loose theories thermodynamic
Make like an Heracletian

I will find the rose for you
And place its petals
On your forehead
Pierce the silence that is strangeness
Break the thick air of the world
And breathe with you
The oxygen
Trapped
In
Bubbles
Beneath
The ice

Beneath the ice
We’ll watch the second city fall
And all clocks seize
And make our pax
With the man with the knife.

James Piers Taylor, 19/08/2006 London


IMAGE: Portal between Worlds (2001) by Henry Kaiser