36. The Count after the Fall

branches of birds
I remember them
they were like night

I prefer camphor
over frankincense
but camphor is meaningless

their bodies were contained
within contours of their moving
if there were eyes for seeing it

delicate dedicate defecate
observations beyond the point
where perceptions were possible

aching and joyous
not the bluejay who is heartless
not the cardinal who is sorrow

a fruit red like a berry
a fruit deep deep purple
black has no taste

terse and three of them
a Host is a moon is a wafer
is the body we chew for blood

car rushing past like surf
the rim of refuse in the sand
a darkness out there like night

if you’d wandered Boston
the banks of the Charles
O, the pleasures of darkness

given over to grief
tires over gravel
growling forms behind us

words abandon us
for the simplicities of sound
insight toward incite

sophist for a night
her neck like a swan’s
but smooth skin for feathers

tender brushstrokes
is paint a kind of ink?
who loves the painted woman?

helicoptered night
the air cut into thin shreds
falling floundering sound

that orange hair
a face made for it
if I had a poem for each time

omelet and seasoned potatoes
the herbs in the sausage
charged sunlight after winter

changed the word
to find the meaning
a sparrow walkway down

railings as shadows
bearing light
footsteps upon stairs

heavy-lidded lemons
two by two
waiting for sleep

a thrum of mumblebees
a carpentered burrowing
to the wood of the house

she stoops to stomp
we stop and shop
doowop doowop

pepper under pestle
the mortar that holds
bright fragments between teeth

scintillations of water
a glassway of trout
grace takes the form of bough

not a chinchilla of evidence
all furry like a cunt
upturned yes or nose at an angle

trembling utopia
a palmful of sweat
the tears in the sheet

in phonographic sound
dark scratches of a voice
we cannot remember it either

the morning’s code
impatient taps or flashes
the brilliance of blindness

determined and desultory
a Tudor Ford
a Fordor Ford and counting

dejected lines
constance and prudence
marvelous mavens of the moue

punctuated pause
a
the time before it lasted

syringe and syrinx
injection of self into self
everything you read is through

harpsichordate
plucking of heartstrings
the clicking of the tongue to come here

iridescent hole
eyeball between eyelids
fifty lashes in a row

succubus and nymphlight
the night of your walking through
what you do what you do

take every broken gadget
and fashion that jetpack
the sky is bigger than the earth

I give you these tremors
from my two bony hands
the terrors of the heart