Transcendence Poem by Matthew Buchwald

I will build myself a carriage
from the pupil of my eye.
And from a year of moonlight, four black horses.
Across the wild blue yonder, across the starry sky,
I will wander with the air of Dante, a tourist.

Let the dead, unloved and forgotten, cry out:
'You will trample on our ghosts! '
I'll shout at the Earth with an insolent leer
'I demand to ride on chiffon
clouds! '

It isn't my fault that the sky is grey,
And the Sun is my rival in this risky
game,
Or that I mock you with songs as old as hunger
and sad and hopeless as seashells!

Dudes who envy my gusto, and you
there, smiling at me like a pickpocket,
drop your plums elsewhere; the painter
will brush them like chancres
onto the cosmic canvas.