Nice Returns on Urns of Ice

The process of putting on airs in a city that burns
may seem futile to those who stress utility through vice.
A better way, from the viewpoint of a gentry that yearns
for shrouded sky, is to deluge this grey earth for a price.
Or can the cost go so beyond normal means that it earns
ire among everyone still coping with ash and lice.
These sorry souls, decent enough, trade misery for turns
under stagnant water even though anguish should suffice.

Holy Ghost in the Machine

I held my listening jar as far from her ears
as was practical, standing on a stack of
bar-shaped boxes that finally felt coherence.
She touched the air with hands made to resist years
of imitation much like wearing a glove
too large for her small frame of reference.

I thought there should be few theories from his mind
worthy of wonder when he's simply a fool
by proxy with an exquisite ease for bullshit.
He pondered upon the difference behind
every copy of his breakthrough as a cruel
and unusual punishment minus the wit.

We see eye to eye like needles on a thread
that unraveled from the fabric of our shared
lives, if such things existed beyond metaphor.
It looked suspiciously pale, almost undead,
and whether this was normal or not as it stared
at us with blindness became too much of a chore.

This piece of God inside the jar understood
what they needed but to tell them would do no good.

So it sat there, better than fortune, which will fade
unlike wrath which rises the same as a killing blade.

Holes in the cap, punched with a pattern resembling
an unknown constellation of a winged-man stumbling.