Much Later, the Architect Reviews his Masterpiece

The moon has no eyes.
Thoth has been waning for days
and Horus, that shambling mass,
has stolen the great scales.

He huddles in our alley ways,
ragged clothes stiff and stale
from the many deaths of unwashed skin.
He brandishes his prize at walls
of mud, brick, and steel,
welding it now as his weapon,
his eye piece.

Upon the walls smudges are weighed
as a thousand hands of emptiness against
the forever smell: a tumult of offal and gratitude.

From somewhere there is no light.
Each brick, each stone, each crevice is left
to its own notion of what its shadow might be.

A creaking can be felt from the umbra.
Something held so close as to be a touch.
The axle is rusty and it sways in time.

TREVOR TINGLE has tried and failed to sail around the world. He lives with his wife and son in New Orleans.