The Fall

Icarus flies or falls through burnt out skies. He spins out of orbit, elemental, breathing in a diminishing collections of breaths, sharp as salt crystals. The gold of his breath is a sunburst, a serrated key to another world, with its harsh cries, its strange textures. Risk: it doesn't exist. The sun is not a crystal ball, it is the scratched lens from his father's magnifier, which passes from sky to sea like a magician's invisible coin. Breathe now, Icarus. Burn your weeping eyes. Here are the endless layerings of things, gifts from the mind's inventions, palmistry, the swift descending geometry of the soul. The sun unzips your wings, pierces your side. The sky is a ruined canvas.Pity us Icarus. Now we will never fly.