eikon aklastos.

we mused underneath bloodless onyx nights,
pointing out the stars like celestial bread crumbs
left behind by some careless angel.  safe
in their studded velvet sea, they sighed and
gossiped high above our heads; they hissed their secrets
to the big blue marble so many light-years away:
sibilant whispers, snake-eyed promises eventually neglected.

someday, when the stars are collected like bits of
shredded reality by zeus's sons and daughters,
when they pull the plug on the moon, when it bleeds out
one or two more firefly flickers and finally dies,
we will discover how to collapse into the edges of existence
and absorb ourselves into the universal soul.

and the official arguments on behalf of the original
galaxies will burn for the sake of ozone and oneiric
existentialism, and when there is no more proof that
we were here, god will raise his finger once more

and we will believe again that we have never been.

crash-landing on the borders of being is the reason for
everything we know, and from birth the universe
drew us closer to the fifth force, to the rapid
lightning-storm hope that we will find ourselves there,
existing beyond the boundary where we are
obligated to disappear into the curvature of space.

until we are dislocated by forever, until we are choked into
getting down to brass tacks, we will cling to our naive
castles-in-air, our utopian tendencies to belief in the
feathered pipe dreams that murmur untruths:

and in spite of striking the boundary, we will breathe
our own gospel, the song of survival and dusting off
the legacy of liberating our nebular islands;

that we are whole, that we are

the galaxies dispersed,
the icon unbroken.