The Rudder Poem by Brian Taylor

A smoking cloud of thoughts
blots out the sun;
swirls in ever-changing
imaginative shapes.

Vast and pervasive
it billows throughout space.

What is this phantasmagoria?
Tiny specks of soot.

While this is still our daily bread
from the ovens
of our senses,
we have not yet
gone beyond.

Stumbling
in this darkness;
fuelled
by earthly fires.

What rudder?
In whose hand?

Put out the fire;
and then
put out the fire
that burns
beneath this funeral pyre.