A WHISKEY BARREL IS SILVER-PLATED ONLY ON ITS INTERIOR, AN INDIVIDUAL THEN PLACES ANNIE LEIBOVITZ’S BOOK PILGRIMAGE, OPENED TO A PHOTO OF NIAGARA FALLS, INSIDE.

we are not now
nor ever will we be
efficient monsters

Sontag says:
“Anything in history or nature that can be described as changing steadily can be seen as heading toward catastrophe.”

there was a time
when there was nothing honesty could cost me

at times I now find myself concealed within
only my own compulsion
the depths of which
are not immediately known

depth as an assessment of worth that is

what is known is that
sometimes the vessel is your salvation
sometimes the vessel is your demise
I proffer that it may indeed be both

served in a silver chalice
an inch is deep enough to drown in

there is a beauty in disaster
that only few admit to see

from the edge of the abyss there must exist a breathtaking view
if only for a moment
before one is lost to the night within

I think of when Sontag writes of the past as a surreal object due to the acceleration of historical change, she says it is possible “...to see a new beauty in what is vanishing.”

to take the sacred journey to that ledge
is to shine a light upon it

there are so many things in the night of which I am unfamiliar

[BARREL, SILVER, LAMP, BOOK - sculpture]

2012