Cogito, and thus I am damned, and thus I suffer,
eclipsed like a moon in a sandstorm of light.

Thinking is the beginning of my Fall,
when I took up the hammer, and the anvil,
like Tubal, and built a tomb with words.

Words, words, words, the sum of my labors,
my being the dust that is blown.

When the winds die the sun opens like an eye
that has shed its patch to mock my piracies.

Yet I have known strange islands on the Main.

So I am unrepentant, and stubborn,
though I peel like paint, though what’s beneath my flesh
rots in an endless flight.