Night, but a husk-cygnet

That swam

Into alabaster despondencies

That sank into the taciturn

Suffering of ivy,

Leafless prodigal wombs

Of linens, river of hides,

Bloodied carnations

Where death lurks as a lark

Of a deck hewn with anarchistic cards

With the hope of a submerged swimmer

In the river Styx

Impalpable caskets aroused

By undressing logs of earth’s tendons,

Disentangling from autumnal aromas

 

Are we but two circles?

One of seabirds, stamens

One of scythes, chaff

Dissolving into silver irises

Conjoined by an overpass

Of musky vagrancies,

Pomona’s nectarine pubis

Via Dolorosa of unseen,

Stairway

 

Or crucifixes of

Solitude’s crossroads

Of starless sand-specks

Upon ashen walls

Where nature-morts

With cored nooses of Nativity lights’

Hung in inert panes?

 

The soul’s bungalow vacant,

Aching columns,

Only, a glassy hummingbird,

Nestled with mummified flowers

Of solitude

 

In what pity does rain torment the tormented?

Who mourns the mourners?

Who dreams the dreams of the last?

What extinguishes stars?

 

Territory of sorrow:

Of pixelated clouds, abloom geysers

Of love-letters, green sprig-pen

And vellum of tears, enveloped

In twine, stamps of autumn-cleaved

Hills, Marks of anguish’s mercuric

Tides, Embalmed in Hermes’s

Pannier of virgin-kisses

 

I shall be an anchor in

Your mesh of obscurity

An anvil, corroded arms

Of obstructed obols

Moored to the dollar-bill of the

Narcissistic sky; everyone is a numismatic

Schooled on mint-tea

Omniscient eye of the monolith

 

But my soul, that lacks

The cold silver of your green

Torso in the heady founts of colognes

 

In what melancholy do sweet words,

Rain on tormented objects,

Satiate the parched lips,

Of the brumal earth?

 

Die and resurrect yourself

In pistils of stars among thorny galaxies

Dove in unfastened skies of Orion’s quivers

Impalpable amber filtered

With the sun’s cigarette of moon-cores

 

If I die, perhaps again

From oblivion’s clench

And rouge-smattered lies

I would be the pen of lime

Erasing the easels

Of stifling hammam-filled cities,

The vagrant ash gags

And torments, with

Colonnades of indigent smoke,

Of an embittered caress,

Upon the fish of hope,

In the river of coalescing blood

 

The Haven with its diadem of incense

Galoshes of tresses

Navel of my loneliness

Hope’s road for a throat

The sky with the dead at its pupils

The living at its toenails

The lovers on the bosom of fury

You, her ego’s lash flitting

Into the minestrone

Of streetlamps