Dim pictures of uncertainty

The saddest faces I have ever seen were buoyed in black cyclones of humor. ~Aucassin Verde

Let's Go To A Dark Place

If we can only last long enough to become
legends, the stars won't matter.
They can blaze away throughout eternity
gently giving up their tendered positions
in time, because they always do.

We, on the other hand, will outlast
ourselves, continue on through the cold
shutdown of the immeasurable void,
well into that final darkness.

So we smoke opium and drink sulfur,
let blood and commend ourselves to rivers
without names, terrain unfamiliar, weathers
hostile and gathering along the eaves
of faultless horizons lying in wait
for the weave of our range.



This is the territory of our health:
A strange woman will emerge to save you
from all you will leave behind, hold you fast
to her slow breast, fill you in ways a mouth
serves only to mislead.

We dismount horses of light tethered
to the penumbras of wild manes
thrown high up into dim pictures of uncertainty,
strive to advance something we know
nothing of, toward some place we will arrive
at much later than we can imagine.

Someone with an empty flask will ask us
with a raised brow, the name of the longest
river in the world and we will answer
without hesitation, we do not know.

We will sleep well
and awaken
when we do.

Joseph Gallo
September 1998