morally enfeebled also, by the incompetence of mere unaided virtue or right-mindedness in Starbuck, the invulnerable jollity of indifference and recklessness in Stubb, and the pervading mediocrity in Flask.

Upleaps my heart into my hands around
silk-handled saingeom. We flow as one,
me and this spinning edge. Without a sound,
my linen feet cross market stones. I lunge
like forest fire in a crystal night
to shatter demons left aft fore and right.

Upleaps my heart as goblin eyes roll up,
as welted tongues roll out, as horn-ed heads
I split in two. With perfect poise, I sup
on righteous victory til all my foes are dead.
In every season weather clime I train
to rid the world of evil and its stains.

Upleaps my soul. I can’t contain it more.
Divine spark diffusing all through my space
of conscious time, infused now with eyesores.
Strange jagged lines in purples, pinks disgrace
my perfect form. Where do I begin,
and where do these blasphemous patterns end?

We lived alone, traveled to the hinterlands
sustained ourselves on wild locusts honey and
God’s redeeming grace, such as it was
in that holy land when the desert bled into the sun
and the sun into God and God into a bright white forever dream
that held us all together forever in the pause between action and reaction
a nice time
a time for reflection
a time to find the edges, to unfold and fold up back again
but now
what now?
Now we are too old tired and brittle
too many years pretending
that evil can be banished to the outsides
too many years upending
apple carts and money changers’ tables
too many years of uninterrupted prosperity and never-ending success
too many great intellectual victories
too few glimpses of the Ghosts of Christmas