Faust    dilemma

The black line
borders the red and brown,
fire and earth -
the pit and the walls -
the would be - poet's path -
escape:
Faust,
the suspended man
dangling
between fire and desire;
his dilemma - ever-time -
consuming through his December.
Faust's December,
the final line,
on the cusp
beneath the frozen white
and the threatening flames,
torments of the wind
and his frozen breath;
Faust, the dangling man,
recalls the caves,
the search - Dante -
the visitor's hell.

Faust's dilemma,
the black line,
his act before,
beyond his belief
or a non-belief; disbelief;
the effort, the exertion -
love or seduction.
Faust the poet
would act, would be -
or to be - saved -
by a faith,
a mystic belief
in the magic of hope:
thoughts of Beatrice,
visions of Helen,
or the faces of the caves:
the remembered faces
of the Celtic, captured,
storied, - departed -
haunting faces
in the rendered stone,
the family crypt
the lineage;
stories of the sermon,
the act, the anatomy
of Eve - Helen -
from the garden;
the anonymity
of his present; memory,
consumed time.

The would be,
the poet's dilemma:
on the cusp
the poet, like Faust
a dangling man,
energy almost spent
in an upward thrust
hangs, suspended
beneath promethean cliffs
and antiquity's caves;
barely above the fires,
the poet, in the poet's December,
his bargain made -
near exhaustion -
on the cusp - suspended,
below the winter's storm,
desolation;
the poet, hoping,
thrusting energy nearly spent,
the poet dangles,
suspended above the fire,
between the breath
of a wind born prayer...