1

we are suspect men birds earth   wrists cuffed
     bent over the hood of evening

what are they asking what have we done?


who can blame the birds ^{(whose hearts are a thousand chemicals)}
that they hallucinate
the rayon day-cover of the moon?
who decides? who commands the visions of the beasts?


beloved be the mini-flashlights of their notes turned on too early fading
     now


birds too clover in the dusk now to sing
hardly being with
neglected slight-wings of the ardent mother of atrocity


birds! she uses two eggs
cracks them in the middle


                                        2

would you be the most violet beast listening at the wall
of the lectisterium     your shallow leek feet
curling on the sienna mesa of Melancholia?


are you leaf
men rustling in the little republic of breath?


can you oratory a little queen to say I love you at the vanity table of
     everything?
or take a seat yourself before the absent mirror?


there, do you see yourself
Ariel in tights striped spook applying a foundation?

what is that look when you pause     just a look?
not bitter in essence as Dido is bitter?
do you too like it black
waved like a limp licorice wand before an orchestra of terror?

eat the scream in your mouth no one will know you ate it,
you punk you dodger of rains children still fling themselves into


                                        3

the huffing accordion commotion of Becoming is a broken idea
there is a boiling-together rather an El Greco thigh
or three condors fighting over an elephant
folio or the vapor-choked station of St. Lazare
blotting its sentences at this darting juncture

                                  a watch clouded by breath


ah, if the senses could burst the multiplication table
freakishly all-tissued and the concept accept its femme

or would it be heaven just to be AMONG
the least exposed AMONG the most exposed
muffled in an antiquity without period

fields and fields of atoms not saying anything not blowing?


the evening big and small
knows it is to all
that each is called
as one who would be called
hyaline


the rain in the roof of the mouth not zenithal get down and on foot
find your hat or not you are the rain’s
silverheaded cane     a luxury

the rain tapping at matter’s root as at a wonder