kept folded in narrow creases,
vermin parables for rot-paper effigies
writ down as paragons in the cheap potboiler of continuous torrent and industry.
Down at the harbor,
salt angels wave goodbye to ships laden
with cream-skinned babies in barrels,
alive in a circumscribed commerce
of palm
and funeral
and coral-colored sunrise.
We peddle our peculiar zodiac at stations
where all trains have evaporated,
the green and violet of bruises rain themselves clean,
and ballads are sung with lark tongues lodged
in mother throats that cannot exist,
but which sing and sing and sing.
Come, find our graves in the rockery,
lend us new deaths by instant contract.
Arrange us on new stars aloft by decree,
and kill the old deities by stoning via television.
The night horizon will slide us
to the harbor,
to the arms of sirens
who will sing us, exploding,
through dust-hearts and lie-lips
to the stuttering surprise
of creatures too perverted and vile
to carry the note that we plot, on charts,
like a poem slipped beneath the door of permanent astonishment.
________
for Kerry's word list and Izy's prompt for the last day of April.
