PREPARATIONS FOR HISTORY

Preparations for History

Up and down the street today walked men on fire
Flapping their arms like songbirds of pain

She said all lunatics are invested with the means
Of prophecy, the dark heart beating within prediction,

As weathermen read the progress of clouds.
The warrior plans strategy and traffic with an eye

On the kimura. Brutal and unforeseen and
Challenging to execute with the grace of a master.

Perhaps only Sinsei Masahiko could have convinced
The General to abandon his plans of honorable suicide.

Telling him how he had bested Helio Gracie in 1955
Not by breaking his arm but by clarity of vision,

Such prescience granted martyrs and maestros to
Foretell how four pillars converge into a Gothic archway

And a smoking pistol. “What is the fourth dimension?”

~ 30