A Strange Species of Sunset
They shoot down a
Penrose staircase from which
the jackdaw’s feathers
issue
affidavits, negotiated
by the slaughterman
performing an oscillating death rite, and
his shambling fowl
trumpeting with gnomic caws who are urged
to expect a long night, to
stay indoors.
The old bird hankers
for the executive branch one
with a claw in influence born of animal negotiation
and another in woe, watching lives bought up like serfs
dry out, and
arriving bei
Nacht und Nebel
at negative capability.
The lord
of the manna,
a slowcoach of grey matter
on the gloaming, drafting
a last statement in
a font
of wan beige that
is illegible
in a notebook as
our bodies are
packed up.
Our hemispheres are half of a roulette
spinning our
clay opinion
and they burn remains
with a vengeance symptomatic
of a Nebbiolo
left to decry its abandonment
for a list of days
in the desert.
The Relocation of the Bureau
They knocked down the back doors
and read me their rehearsed rights
swathed in rosettes.
I thought the black bag was a nice touch,
I recognised a
trusting nod to the impregnable
mountains on
the day Atlas
of Phthiosis quit
the chiropractors
but now I stand over
those poor souls
corrected in
the detention centre,
labouring
under a mistaken
impressionist,
who affirmed
a
maggoty authority
at
the tribunal that was held
under
liturgical colours
until
the seamstress cried
foul
play of the post
- the tide brought me twice a day with a fa, la, la, la, la.
I am pained like a plaintive plaintiff
wriggling
from the accusatory
gaze
of the defendant,
but
then the miserable
have
no other medicine
but hope.
I
do my best behind bars;
passion
is a prisoner
that
makes screws f
all out.
The Witness in the Drapes
I see slack jaws of the adjudicatory panel who merrily as bears
gawp at the
noble testimonies composed
therein
whoever was overcome stayed this love
song
with a yearning complimentary of minor chords (?).
I happen to know by
my patriot bones how it comes
to be
that humanity is wrapped hastily in the twinkling of an eye
utterly lost but
defiantly so
face down like a nobleman in a tourniquet shameful
to be alive.
The attorneys are maenads cavorting in the nasturtiums,
lost to the
newsreaders flashing
on the television
worthy of nobody
in particular
opponents Dionysus (?) approved of.
The too-apt storm
reminds itself
on the magistrate’s windows.
The jailbird twitches
to the tune of an exaggerated fee
and all feign sobriety
when a figure with joyous timing
puts twit and twoo together
and gets forcefully to work on the ribs.
All I can discern from my handwriting
is the merciless knowledge
that the hitherto
and the afterward
will be stripped from the record.