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 an officer 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
and all I can discern from my handwriting
is the merciless knowledge
that the hitherto
and the afterward
will be stripped from the record