Too big, too grand, too full, too fabulous,
too much for words: cliches all. You were prepared, 
overflowing 
       with practised ease of recognition
of the thing - old, powerless, laughable,
a caged creature, a tired carneval of illusions,
no? No. Emerging from the deep springs of the soul
you never knew you had (no, never before this
did you have a soul), coming to strike you
in the throat, beating in your eyes, your teeth, 
hungry for your lifeblood: 
                          more life to life
to make a thing greater than life. Always forever, 
always absolutes. Love, destiny, madness, truth,
love, madness, destiny, death. No room there 
for goodness. Beauty - oh, beauty in abundance,
heartbreaking, crushing, gasping, vast,
eternal. Inescapable. And to pick between
                           beauty and goodness -
either way, it is the loss of everything.

Everything. That word
again: absolutes. And there madness begins
and with madness, selfishness, and we all
                         know the end of that.
Paris, beloved, please kill me now! Strike, 
While I still hover in the nothingness of choice. 
For either way 
               you have already won. Go ahead, 
drink the power of my tears, gorge on the life 
waning from me, triumphant goddess of death 
and desire. Ecstasy and pain both
point to one end, which is always now 
                                   and Paris.

Now that this comes into our world - though
we are the latecomers in truth  - 
how can we bear it?
How can we continue to exhibit 
such shining pride in the amazing discovery
                       of our own existence?
Between Paris and savage,
between hallowed ignorance and tearing loveliness,
how can we share the world
          with the knowledge of all we never were
and never shall have been? Tree-spirits, 
earth-spirits, part of bark and stone and moss
and broken mandelbrot fragments of sky,
barely conscious of being created,  
altogether unfit for the company 
               of the army of sub-creation
that emerges and fades
from the ends of the sky to the ends of the earth.
And the insignificant attempts we've made
                             towards mediocrity
damn us even as we step up to the line
in wait for humanity, as we carry them quietly
                       in the hollow of a palm,
hoping against hope they would not take note
that we are not of the blood and spirit
of gods. We have already lost.