"ODE: A Crime Against the Moone"


1.
The music of the years, too dear for me
a candle drowned in its own wax
slavery has returned to the world
where urge & the Story dovetail

we trade mutable masks, i & the dead
one of us has lost the code
false phosphorus, indigo on black
a skinhead reads me my cards

you're paying too much for entropy
i know where you can get much cheaper
entropy--lore
of the dispossessed
enters my body
wordlessly, like the chill
of a great cathedral.

2.
Fathomless answer, the city
had assumed its golds & even the undersides
of the overpasses
were lit. Down the narrow alley stairway
four detours on the way there
wonder underway, marooned near doom
ineluctable return. Railey
wept.
Silvered by slug trails of joy
the hundred-foot statue of Stalin
visible from across the Trinity River.
The Story
into thirteen swans divides;
the colors of a bruise are not the sunset's.
In napalm i have burned
cold orb & bright
impoverished kiss, forage
five old wolves
tarrying at the shadowless duration.

3.
Crashsound returns as ingots
wasp tattoo of the bronze mortgage
graves laid upon graves
the weeping statue, righted
i keep hearing singing in the walls
jarring the gyro
through the Hunger Wall
an experiment in mixing musics
MC 900-foot Earthworm
in this former empire
without the stained glass
House of the Black Mother of God
the moment, overly edged
salvo of ornaments gargoyle scree
can't argue with the cold
alone in the Police Museum
fenced pit of rubble
the basement walls bared to the sky
return to a dubious parking place
mayor of the besieged town
distant birdsong
in this bright abyss of air
curiously intimate.

4.
Or say my Evil Eye had flowered
Under a rain of stones
on the beach of the lifeless sea
from watching fires elapse
then flick an ant away
reasons
the counterclockwise clock
conspirators' passageway
opened in the tarry afternoon
stone forest chess game
by a saffron quaver
following the wires
vegetarians carrying candles of animal fat
divvy the gleaming implements
ridged to my thumb.

5.
Possessing you, why does my time compare
captioned victim ore into slag
rose vowel interval wall of starfish
last night of the Winter King
open door, molten road, shoe in the moonlight
pointing
pointing the ninth candle
& these details are things i want to know
& what i want to know i have to find
orange sparkspray
the length of an eyeblink
car-tossed cigarette at night
the Shrine has vermin.

Labels: vampire mirror 4