Sublimation

The Prophet’s in the morgue,

Six feet is a long way up and

Further down,

About as tall as a man can rise

Above his peers in a standing ovation

Of praise and gratitude,

Deafening applause in the sense that

No one hears it anymore,

Not since the red skies and nightfall,

That night when Civilization

Grew up in reverse, or seemed to,

Now scolded in the infantile prose

We all so lovingly fostered

In a playpen holding ones and twos,

“Me” and “You,”

Called brothers and sisters but

Quick to reject such optimistic binaries.

In place of names we chose places,

By choice or by force is

No longer relevant, though once it was—

Why the substitutions?

Does the present tense not stand alone,

Does it bow to the whims of a

By and gone scholar,

Discontented with the world and

Ravishing the memories of a generation

He cannot begin to remember?

Making love to a faceless crowd in a

Passionless, sexual conjecture—

The world is sublimation

To the poet.