Fixed Ideas

It is not a question of believing in death with his Rolex,
boastful, flashing about—alluring, certainly, and eager
(if only to spike your drink with despair)—

by the end of the night he always disappears.
Nor is it a matter of time running out. Time never ran,
that was merely an idea. And don’t worry about

the centuries, indigestible, heaving around
inside you like a poisoned breakfast. To believe
in their geology, their marbled certainty,

is to believe in soup, or that this inclemency
is the weather of eternity. The hills are not fixed,
and nor are the years. They are wave forms,

they are tears. Some like to style out death like a shawl—
here is my dear kind death, they exclaim. I reject
all your waffle, your blather, your talk of a hereafter.

I am braver than you, I am better.
See how they swagger! It’s as if they want praise,
but their boldness conceals a dreadful malaise.