In the Margins of King Lear’s Mind:

Mark how a flea may engine 
The behemoth and steer its fallout. 

All planets that don’t orbit enough burn-
Too widely freeze; we must be perfect or destroyed.

Never be the god of Time, God says to kings.
Never, be the god of Time, Power says to them.

Act I:

Darkness for your eyes! You perceive the undulations of the greys
And whites that are but tints, not sights; look! 
It is not beyond your seeing to glimpse the world cast in the sun
So plagued is the world with Nothing’s beauty! 

Great power enjoys mutations on command: 
To a mountain in the wind it demands it be a kite: the kite a falcon that obeys; 
That falcon be a larger mountain. Who can please the whims of one
That requires the godliness in restrained obeisance? Authority would employ
The gods so long as they be also gods mindless, gods will-less. 

This space is breathless, lord- it takes in nothing, so expels the same. 
I proclaim you by my nothing-power the authority of Nothing! 
A deathland, author, a space, a vast and teasing kingdom that’s never. 

Substance dried. Authority cracked. They have become the you You lack. 

Act II: 

Light’s needed on dark guts lest they promulgate darkness in the day,
Preparing fearsome nights for the bright and superstitiousless morning. 
I shall hole you up to fill those insides with starlight-
Now you’ll be dark yet inspiring. 

I am in my wretchedness my disaster’s mother as I am always the realm’s father. 

This is a season past all naming. Winter? No. This is Ending. 
Such a force of Life could but develop concomitant with a strife internal
That the ultimate gale of the heart will blast what may be the finale of the world.
Yet if the world exhales again-
Spring that very instant. 

Act III:

Wrath. Fury. Vengeance. Vile allotment of muck, catastrophe, ponderous challenge,
Ill-fitting soul, illegitimacy, precise wretchity. You are generous to your namesake;
You affront, yet our relation is unchanged. I know from the swallowed pain of your
Presence- Love deceives. Love is your name named Love. Unified, unlightable night. 

There’s some declension in myself that’s converted me into a vexing
And imaginary child, some dissociate love whereby I exalt i above I.
All: fear this baby-I that I by I will come undone,
For this nervousness is love and apprehension, love and guilt and bane
And a conscience with its nerves outside its weathering flesh-love. Woe! Love nothing. 

Inner brilliance! Your astronomy melts to a matte erebus.

Act IV:

Snug nadir! There’s no obliviousness to Fortune, she keeps all in mind. 
We are bound or unbound by Nature’s care in unchecked space.

The wild Wild! Imagings untame and ever upward in vexation-
My mind’s upon a cliff, calling birds, aspiring camaraderie, leaping!-
And in the plummet to the wild end this is all: 

…

Act V:

The stiffening of the nation- dead to them- cried them out, 
Those exiled death-throes that precede when a country shakes
And the honor in the average bones feels that convergence: 
Sir, there’s been resuscitation. 

The time to laugh will kill the time to laugh. 
Soon enough severity will wound the comic time of comic artifact; 
All occasion will play the same, but we shall see how morbid was our laughter
When time unfurls unlaughed at. Hell is cooled to earth with all hell laughing. 

Identity so eaten by the mortal plague, we are uncreated when betrayed. 

I know not what I know. 

S.T. BRANT

S. T. Brant is a teacher from Las Vegas.

Pubs in/coming from EcoTheo, Door is a Jar, Santa Clara Review, Rain Taxi, New South, Green Mountains Review, Another Chicago Magazine, Ekstasis, GoneLawn, 8 Poems, a few others. 

You can find him on Twitter @terriblebinth or Instagram @shanelemagne.