Oblivion's Paternity

Think of a Hector or a Hecuba, remember them

against power you said.

Power, I think, is air.

The moon burns. The ether breathes invisible

fire through the desert. Awoken

from the storm of exhausted visions

in the vortex of the desert:

the beach of an imagined ocean,

shore of a liminal sea.

Imaginal,

the harmony

wherein Christ walked off

into the desert

and never climbed the cross.

Notes to a Desert Epic

Here’s a theory.

Falls as rain, fate falls, clinamenous fate. No discernment, no preference falls on all the passersby, forces on them what it will. Souls- the wind: free, always in motion; stillness is death and irrememberance. Eternity desires change, so souls flow. Destiny- up with the stars, the self-elected fate of an actor. Destiny is that inactivity of freedom, wretch, unfortunate, bound to wander into Fate.

Here, applied.

Jesus wanders to be eternal, else he should select a fate and bring out the collapse of time. His destiny is a selected service to non-committed peregrinations, choosing no activity. Salvation is inactivity, binds him to desert-walking; tells his apostles to feign his tale; martyr to scandalize the tale. Martyred to allow people to choose their fate of being saved, else too many wander as him in a purely open destiny.

The personal.

Rain never falls on me. Pure destiny. Fate-immune. The sadness, though, at fate's exclusion forces recognition: lonely is being the only fateless wanderer. What does it mean? Always the prophet asks. There’s nothing that isn’t lost in this election. Trap of freedom.

The universal.

Caprice and Calliope. Creation is capricious, the joy that inside Nothing breathed and laughed originally; bore the sisters whom love each other and love fun. God came from a prick of a needle mishandled by Calliope. Drop of blood. Playfully she dotted Caprice among the jokes. Caprice sings, Calliope understands it as if speech. Music dulled to prose to comprehension. Chain of thought. God devalued.

S. T. Brant lives in Las Vegas where he teaches high school English and Journalism. His debut collection Melody in Exile was published in 2022. His work has appeared and is forthcoming in numerous journals including Honest Ulsterman, EcoTheo, Timber, Rain Taxi, Ocean State Review, Green Mountains Review, Ekstasis, and New South. He is the founder of the online reading series In the Fire Garden that hosts virtual readings and interviews with emerging and established writers. He can be contacted through his website at ShaneBrant.com, Twitter: @terriblebinth, or Instagram: @shanelemagne.