it was the last coherent summer

the search engines had learned to dream

there was a comfort in the old sense of the word

and the people still believed in goodness' sake

when I saw you again

I had just gotten married

and you were out of jail

for stealing a dog from a witch

I don't think you believed me

when I said I knew about the black magic

that I had seen the eternal serpent machine

spin its Fibonacci spirals

from behind a thin veil

the sight of your broken dream is fixed now in my mind

you stood there, a still life of dead game

strung out like a hare caught in a pin

plucked like a pheasant on display

there is a civil war inside all of us

between an oppressor and the oppressed

both blame the self and the other

for their disunited state

the burden of responsibility

is to be expected

but when armistice comes

will you forgive the practical man

who had known the horrors of Santo Domingo

who had wept for the heroes cut out on a limb

who withdrew his hand?