Mark Terrill

The Specialist Years

            Wake up look out
from under shattered dream-shards
see waters rippled—trees bowed
            ornate cornices of cumulus
scudding west to east—
            walk on into the waiting arms
of that which will decimate you—
past the last brown town
            past the last green glade
past the last clever lyrics
            and the ringing guitars—
where gravestones and urns
            and other silent syntax
act like periods and paragraphs
            and other full-stop caesura
in the long sentences
            of the passing millennia—
where the birth and destruction
and the days and the months
            keep piling up and up—
on the head of a tarnished pin.

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