TAM O' SHANTER REVISITED 
(for Homi Babha)

Reason (old friend) is a skeleton of dim
dissociative structures
pink
at its center with
a somewhat citric taste
to the after-burners

etymology links it to any social cause
other than utopian

sunburned by seizure in a
fatherland of bagpipes
it is the corpse of Burns

standing on the deck
of the verb to sink

traditionally insisting
that it's not its job

to be God.