A Theft and Recasting of a Line by Zarathustra (Nietzsche)

What the masses learned to accept without reason

reason cannot refute

and the pretty baubles and grand gestures

trip the light and sell the rabble

while logic becomes dressed as witchcraft

and is danced from fear to shame

and returns, hollowed out,

as sham and excuse

Moving Into Lent

the wind sweeps in from out

crow’s wing brushes whisper across the forehead

they’re falling now

                                    a couple more

            funneled into sluice gates and caught

            before a finality is realized –

every so often you feel the wing brushing close

like a scythe whistling through the air

you wonder what gets harvested

            what blackness

            or searing light

            who the dark becomes

            blinding whiteout     

            and why

is it time

and is all this collateral

or is this a target

a morning is cruel, or it is not

a night is harrowing, or it is not

the world is pain, or it is not

the is and is not of wildly intersecting planes

flashing crazed like the eye blinks