“and other forms of boredom advertised as poetry”

-Leonard Cohen, New Skin for the Old Ceremony

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once again it all becomes the bonfire

men in caves leading tribes away from the desert

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once again there is poverty in this story

and the poet of the picket line and the poet of the magazine

selling digital remedies for the end times

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the altar 

replaced by the

supermarket

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the last congregation 

passes around a bag of Doritos

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the communion becomes the telephone

and you are supersonic

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ricocheting down the dairy aisle

sanctifying all the cold cuts you commune 

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III.

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my father tells me the algorithm has died/that there was a man selling eulogies/brewing syrups/blind/medicine and snake oil for the healing/come forward/he would say/come towards the centre of the digital/commune with me as if were the pastor/kneel

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kneel before flopping pixel

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IV. 

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the angels take the last train out of Manhattan 

you stopped driving sometime after dusk

the car broke down and 

you slammed the door behind you 

anger in the streetlight 

you walked out towards the forest 

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I watched you 

from a distance 

holding the soil of some distant holy land

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I closed my eyes before you started praying

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when I returned you were gone

nothing left

only instructions to travel west

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V. 

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god becomes the comic book movie

the pulp beaten out of the paper

out my eyes - forgetting how to glaze over

there is always something to look at

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god help me there is always something to look at

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VI. 

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I wrote this letter to you to curb my consumption

To stop my fingers growing fatter

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Love in the time of quantities

I begin to eat my pen 

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VII. 

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when you call my mother after dinner 

tell her I have gone to bed

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that my spirit stopped growing older 

in the church of the television 

that stasis usurped enlightenment 

and that I could not bear the weight of it 

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tell her 

I was not afraid of the introduction

only I was scared to speak in the contemporary voice 

cannibalised and hardy - I ate more than I needed 

and before I finished dinner 

I was in Amsterdam

spitting out fish bones 

and listening to the sea

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VIII. 

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music devours its son

something in its eyes  

removes the mundane from the skin 

someone pawns the ceremony off for scraps

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the living go on breathing 

buying groceries 

driving further out of town 

and writing everything down 

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only now there is no boredom in poetry  

and nothing left to sell 

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