Here in life, they would understand.
How could it be otherwise? We had groped too,
unwise, till the margin began to give way,
at which point all was sullen, or lost, or both.

Now it was time, and there was nothing for it.

We had a good meal, I and my friend,
slurping from the milk pail, grabbing at newer vegetables.
Yet life was a desert. Come home, in good faith.
You can still decide to. But it wanted warmth.
Otherwise ruse and subtlety would become impossible
in the few years or hours left to us. " Yes, but ... "

You write for news and Venetian vellum.

I answer: From the sea today a mystery:
proportion"s carapaced nightmare: lobster.

You write for burnt glass.

I answer: When tides cross San Marco"s cobbles,
bare-shouldered women, bare-shouldered girls,
walk planks to the dark cathedral.

Herr Wilibald, my French mantle greets you!
My plumes and misgivings greet you!
Blue-black near the boiling vat, my carapaced neighbor
greets you! (Since dusk, his thin-stalked eyes, like sunflowers,
have tracked my orbiting candle.)

It wicked from his meat
in the thick of bedroom
gloom, a sweet and sour

sauce of breath and sweat;
of Scotch malt steamed
through all the pores, or

bourbon, a dozen jiggers,
fumes floating out all
the fissures, the flues

until air grew complicit,
redolent of pitch pine,
resins — and groggy

enough a child of six
could pass out cold;
sometimes vodka,

so clean, almost a lemon
scent, funneling in, but
a rancid stink coming out:

the body"s long exhale;
lobes and ventricles,

Ratso pigeons
strictly for the birds.

Morning vocalizing
to settle one"s nerves.

Practice makes perfect.
Hello high wire art,

and come back O
red-tail youth. Upstart.

Hair bulbs down there.
Feed and need.

Sunshine so justified
upon my wings and

I sing for my supper.
Puppy litter. Woof.

Kittykats. Chickees.
Big black bird indeed.

Red-tail now
agh family-size.

Bring it on! Heart
of stone gold carved,

Big Bad Daddy
of Plumage Ebony,

back in the day

Brown as the ground
yet not ground. As the dirt
yet not dirt though
dirty. Tooled
but not tools,
soled but not
solo or soiled
and in my hands
brown, suffering,
unsoled. Today,
as my oldest friend is cremated
and I dress,
two gaping mugs —
comedy, tragedy —
cordovan lipped,
mustachioed, grave,
wail by the bed.

Despite the geologists" knowledge and craft,
mocking magnets, graphs, and maps —
in a split second the dream
piles before us mountains as stony
as real life.

And since mountains, then valleys, plains
with perfect infrastructures.
Without engineers, contractors, workers,
bulldozers, diggers, or supplies —
raging highways, instant bridges,
thickly populated pop-up cities.

Without directors, megaphones, and cameramen —
crowds knowing exactly when to frighten us
and when to vanish.

The flight attendants
go
from kore to semaphore

as a city falls into
discredited ether —

Gewick, gewick, oo-oo!

Shoulderless
stoic, take — from hands wisely
gloved —

a bony treat
through the hardware
in your face;

shrug your throat.

They have no sense of what they"re looking at,
Unless the object moves.
(Or so he"s read; who knows if that"s the case?)
A painted bird"s an empty analogue
To the oblivious cat.
And it is not his still familiar face
So much as that distinctive gait which proves
The master to his dog,
Who frolics for him like an acrobat.

His eyes need movement too, but make their own.
His most fixated gaze —
On one small figure in a Bruegel scene,
Or on the camber of his lover"s lip
He worships unbeknown,

Sand Wars was first
published in Flanders,
but as Van Bellingen
pointed out, " eggnog. "

A narrow girl sells purses made of reed.
Dead rabbits hang by feet, their red eyes dull,
while chickens crammed in cages peck their seed.

A vessel in Juan"s brain begins to bleed,
spreading into the fissures of his skull.
A narrow girl sells purses made of reed.

The madams in the district underfeed
hookers they line up for a spectacle
while chickens crammed in cages peck their seed.

A vendor buys his wares, then smokes some weed;
hookers they line up for a spectacle
while chickens crammed in cages peck their seed.