(Editor’s note: These poems first appeared in the collection, Jonestown Lullaby. Coverage of the book itself appears here.)
Unsacred Zone
Social illusions, relics of exhausted thought
Gone
Eyes dead with a host of pills and syringes
He lives in an unsacred zone of knotted secrecy
His frail deistic plans unsuccessful
He claims to read my thoughts
Yet
Other voices, of no celestial urging,
Whisper to his abandoned mind
His dismal squawkings on the jungle loudspeaker
Groan to the wind strange prophecies
Of approaching doom
The terror grows
I embark on a dark journey under a hollow sea
Angry victim of unfounded treason
I deliberate in the shadows
I lie beyond the hope of speech
That has no cure for his deadly mind
I plan my escape
Unremembered
I almost woke up
Without remembering
Those who had been deluded of their dignities
Reduced to the quintessence of pain
Exquisite and everlasting
Those who remain unremembered
Who died in no glory
Those who fell backward into their graves
In the shadow of their fear
Those who are now past all concern
But as the sun rose
Their faces cascaded before my eyes
As they vowed
Never to be unremembered