Idolization of Humanity

A hooded figure holding a boy’s hand as they walk through a cemetery.

Idolization Of Humanity

A cento curated from Jacob Rubin’s ‘Idols of Immortality’

When I smiled at the boy, the boy smiled back
—the three of us would be dead.

the boy played within it. Death sitting on a stoop
face was heavy, torso shifted, body
a kind of medium—

an infinite photograph
struck as a justly mocked word…
ineffable.

describe death:
senseless, secular, no sense.

Permanence gnashed their teeth, 
wept of mortality
accused life of being. Conceit
that death was lonesome.

The boy wondered if that language
“intractable ineffable-ness”
was Death’s way to return, too.

I eat meat. I lie death meditated 
in a walking temple—

the boy saw the leaves that were dying
in the eyes of the woods,
reciting their memoirs
like a passage felt through flowing water

the boy saw Death
walking them to a stone library
in a brilliant form of wild prose;
a stage magician parading in his own holy clothes.