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           Waiting for the Climax

(published in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine, June 22, 2003)

Usually, it arrives late: the epiphany
Just after I’ve slain a horde of deadwood, met
A dozen dead ends
And nibbled the noon dust, it comes
Fashionably late and hopelessly futile.
Its face the insipid face
Of my defeat.

Often it kisses me
But only after I’ve dug deep into the mire
And traded my soul with the pebbles
I now toy in my hand and mind.
I am all mouth, all fingers,
All flesh, as it unravels
Unexpectedly
Like some rare oxymoron
Jutting out a bald field of prose.

How can beauty, unfolding, be unjust
And useless? A gift that arrives too late?
A fatal after-thought, a coup-de-grace
Straddling its own casket.

Sometimes, it teases me: salvation
That bears the fate of Sisyphus.
                        And others:
Van Gogh, Plath, Nietszche, Christ—
Pawns to the reckoning that came too late.

           Copyright (c) 2004 by Joe Bert G. Lazarte