No Peace In Knowledge. Still, Rest Fills Its Void. Poem by Aaron Graham

Moss grows on but one side of a tree.
As before- stripped by the roll of a stone-
This caldera of disquiet, alone.

Here- I was supposed to feel free.
See fear in a patch of lichen. Alarms,
Incased in the folds of the inlet’s arms;

Only feels, is only aware of the
Angry aqueous confluence-raging,
Benedictine pacts- of retribution.

No more aware of menace: spray or stream
Than is inveterate seed of its ground-
Cradle, coffin, Prometheus Unbound.

Terror that knows no reprise, no eddy
Is unknown, seeping groundwater: The wind
In the door exsanguinates respired air.

Yet seed and lichen have learned to- simply-
Exist, unfettered by the unknown fears,
And so truly exist-beyond the years.


Perhaps La Chute removed ubiquity
Left as The Exile exits The Kingdom,
Leaving awakens articulate death.

Aware, absent pretense, eat of this tree!
Now, truly aware, is, truly, to die.
Our whirring, chittering world: too aware.

Obsessed with knowing; obsessed with dying,
Is dying. I could swim in, fall- free- with
The confluence, but I am to aware.

And am dying of awareness’ disease.
Before I too become to like the dead
I would raise my atrophied hand; to light

A final Cigarette, whose ash entombs.
My anemic seed neath earthen mound, there,
(Unaware of this world) would begin life.