Robert Jacoby
The apocalypse in my mind
The apocalypse in my mind comes horsemen, millions
razor hooves over giggling teeth
orgiastic up from my schismed earth
pandemoniac black ants lava from a stump set afire
out of the blood-cut of my rotting east
dissolving down upon the ruin
the ruin of my strange name
my strange name carved out of the soft flesh of inner thigh
the mouthless gods tread this unknown name, call me
down to the lacquered sea
down to the thinned-through tissues of memories’ fables for
children of my unforgettable heart that Mystery riding the beast where
I know the end of the world where the graves
we dig are never deep enough to hold
our misshapen hearts and bones.
The apocalypse in my mind has riders.
The apocalypse in my mind rides time.
It is a repeatable horror I watch the horizon wrest dumbly.
Robert Jacoby (www.robert-jacoby.com) pursues happiness in Maryland. His poems and short works have appeared in about 20 literary magazines, most recently in Sleet Magazine, Slow Trains, and The 2River View. He is the author of two books, a novel, There are Reasons Noah Packed No Clothes (2012), and a memoir (by interview) Escaping from Reality Without Really Trying (2011). He is at work on a second novel, Dusk and Ember; a book of poems, Stars Fall Nude, from which these poems are selected; and another nonfiction book — Never Stop Dancing — a memoir (by interview) of a friend who lost his wife in a pedestrian traffic accident in Washington, D.C. in April 2010, and the aftermath and recovery with his two young sons (visit his friend’s online journey at http://hole-in-the-sun.blogspot.com/).