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To gridlock the sense beside senseless

traipse that belted tombstone path

the way a corkscrew coil entwines

foregoing and hereafter, we lumber over

this denouement, stone rubbing against stele,

abrading feebly the great predictable.

My grandfather’s name, dwindling away

flowers placed and withered and removed

and placed and withered and removed

and I can’t tell you any different, of these

pyrrhic elegies, incepted boneyard scenes;

darkness and I, alone make fond bedfellows

and a grave is a grave is of the gravest mistakes

pike-alley confronted, these echoes rankle

the boat is inside of the bottle, it’s already too late

still no farther, forward-backwards in or around.

Submerged, circumscribed by this earth,

there’s no harsher environment.