Aaron Fagan

Values of the Past

Love does not make time less horrific. Time is love.
Grief makes me live in a fantasy world where banal
Objects adopt a pornographic array of slapstick aspects.
A trickster in me decoheres from serenity and order,
Claims worship begins where the lust for power ends.
To revivify the virtue-dead with skin-shed words—
Resigned to be moved by no inner sense of being,
A riddle like a cause, slain by collective wills and laws—
Upsets my eccentric rage transfigured by love beyond
Desire (until next time, which may not occur) revealing
What comes to confusion: one’s gain spells state equity
After all. Love’s omnipresence in time removes a mood
Of grace from necessity. Knowledge wears us down.
Without knowing, I dance around the dances of the age.