poem
Volume 29, Number 1

Black Pyramid

Zoetrope God spins, resulting in lives, 
years, movements. The world as optical toy. 
Exhibit A: soul as special FX. 
Weightless whiteness. Brief puff behind the brow. 
Vestigial, if it exists. Most of 
us don’t use it. Lose it. Adieu, virtue. 
The possessed, exorcised of free will, float 
same as saints. Not much difference these days. 
Rent a movie from that new sub-genre 
quickly filling shelves. “Torture porn.” Grotesque 
perversions and mutilations worked up-
on women. Priests molesting children. Who 
knows where it’ll end? Not television, 
mental mosquito distracting us from 
looking up and noticing that black hole 
kept in check by science, magic and luck. 
Juvenile diabetes soars. The urge 
in charge. Binge / purge = fasting. INRI 
had his day. Now we place our faith in cash. 
Gluttony. Safe sex. Zombies start moving 
faster in movies, then rise in real life. 
Estates revert back to them. This time the 
dead are the ones building the pyramid, 
church leaders strangely mute on the topic. 
Bored, we hit the buffet at Adam’s Rib, 
as corpses push stone blocks up ramps all day.


—Michael Kriesel