Mazeppa Composes a Poem-Thing

Let me be the lightning rod, since no one else steps forward. I have waited these many years, and I grow weary. The blood at sea level should be rich and thick with iron, but all about me wax anemic. I shall take to the heights and observe the clouds, swift tumbling turbulent sea, foaming and frothing against the peaks. The Appalachians, bent low in Gothic ruin, have always called to me. But now I hear the Rockies, their fierce sublime crowning desert wastes. No more the reassuring comforts of worn hills; now the young, high, proud breasts, Promethean and suckling the new wolves of Romantic cheek. The seeds of revolution are sown with every calculated newscast, every Presidential prevarication, every new commercial selling soap that burns the skin. If you want to sleep, then do so; but when you wake—if you wake—you, and your companions of Ephesus, know that the hours you traded for drowse were years spent comatose, and the world that greets your sleep-caked eyes is what happened during dreamtime.