III. FRONT-ROW SEATS
*
A chair
invades space
a bed as horizon
stifled screams fondle
a fattened silence
front-row seats this lovely day
•
Haggard inhabiting
full-page spread
in guarded language
a shroud picked apart
fighter so keen and tottering
stricken smashing the tumors to bits
•
For the linen to dry
he hangs dead leaves
where someone could play
at palmistry
young old man on home marshland
•
Eyelids unstitched
words adrift
one mimes merry widow
where the laughs are dashed
cancer bulking flush with storm
•
To feed fair death
to a doomed man fermenting
other plans for a past
first light of a radiant doubt
hollow bed and heart on edge
•
He dreams with raised fist
ensnared in storms
of stringy dawn
perhaps he wished
to be wakened abruptly
•
May autumn squid about our listless feet
while the minutes grow calluses
a gentle florist in love
with calm music
will unsnarl winds and seasons
•
To quench thorn plants’ thirst
before sunup
keep watch on humors as they rise
retouch but faintly
an original body
truce by stealth
•
When on return
a false start emerges
some child should rap at
our questing pasts
strip the dead
to dwell in words
•
This mellowed profile
tensed over chasm
tightrope walker along the days
mother will you gather
simples off the graves
•
The weather it takes
the complexion she fakes
when other subjects fume
that a pious hush prunes
to speak of nothing
not
remember
•
May a quarter moon split apart in our fingers
deep in our guts
black ageless water
another evening may be right behind us
•
My solitude a feline night
an opera buffa
crowd stampedes
a shout mulls silence
masks or unmasks to the bone
•
Death-cell lust
for the unclad widow
gestures more fuzzy than ancient history
where a gorged paradise
vastly deflowers
•
Arched skeleton
playing the spinet
a dead fish under each note
he weaves
a bruised silence
a choir of unborn children orbits