David McLean-

They Came Together


they came together like clouds

because mankind is fundamentally homeless,

wherever it is the body grows,

and nostalgia for the land is emptiness

forever. i do not care



because cruelty is better then suicide

or night. they came together

like fish drying in a net, dead men

have so little to forget but the claws

and the absences, the murder



and madness that burned within them,

until they noticed that stardust covers

dead animals but dead men

are covered by failure and the ugliest flesh

ever; their eyes become broken beetles



and they can no longer mean or be.

they are stones no body needs,

unless they have said nothing

like nothing should be said,

loud enough to resurrect an instant



come back to suck us vampire-dry,

loud enough to teach a day to die.

they came together like clouds,

the children in all the asylums

and orphanages, homeless



because alive, and not just a body

but mind with memories to confabulate,

with an identity to pretend to notice

in the importunate self. they were made

of dreams and words and death,



which is forgetfulness, so their skinny feet

traced their evenings through dust

on medieval floors. the furniture there

taunted them by its sullen presence:

they knew we are present always already



this shortest eternity, maybe a century,

so certainty is never more