I

    Dribble. Whatsoever unceasingly,
    current fish. No submerged statuary
    hath prominence among ye. Green
    luxuries grapple frondulent candles
    and walk off perturbed, their digits
    scorched, their foreheads bent by the
    age-old light.


    II

    Mystery fowl alight upon
    massive eternities feigning
    myopia. No talons can
    touch through the subtle skin of Death!
    I lick it, unmoved. Some
    membrane, an ominous incantation,
    rustles under my tongue;
    and I resort to unscalded cocoa.


    III

    A solar concentration inhabits my kitchen,
    frowning on kettles with brilliance
    as if to bake metal like meat,
    like acts of creation unsustained. I spill.
    No tremor shakes the floor; no tiles
    beguile their linoleum and froth blackberry.
    The old student with his spouse's frock
    found nitro's advent with his arse up-aired.
    Raise not the dark side to the sun.


    IV

    There is a green dust of this planet
    far from the moon's green cheese;
    there is a species of rot we cannot reach
    though we sweep with drooping members,
    mustachioed retirees of old, useless battles.
    Methinks some brand of bug might scamper through,
    a translucent purplish beetle in fey attire, hawking,
    "I am the beast; grab an oar." And in his rags
    his dirty smile.


    V

    The corner of the mouth
    is a wall-eyed spider, whose
    gaze droops off-color and dim
    through tissues of frozen piss.
    The Eskimo relieves himself to die,
    impaled on the spear of his effluence;
    and still-warm residues of smooches, oaths, and lies
    spread a cobwebbed hammock from ear to ear.


    VI

    An origin is filth aground, a turd
    between lovers. In sleep they wobble
    apart, tired tops, and bouncing brains
    fart forth early morning deliveries.
    The truck. How do they know what they
    may carry, between their axles?


    VII

    Portentous, unread Talmud, on the high
    shelf, untouched since Alkan. This space
    I suspect tensegritous; this bulk
    a gesture for the fragility of my skull;
    this light, the hatred of the setting sun.
    Does the scholar laugh when dead priests
    vomit seed into his open dusk's window,
    their billowing corpses exposed and enlarged,
    their jaws wrapped with miraculous newspaper?
    Or does he reach into some recess for an acorn
    prophylactery, only to pluck forth a recondite balloon?
    His eyeballs sag like Camembert until the final
    drop is extinguished.


    VIII

    Curled horns of amber 'fore
    a gnarled glimmer kneel and
    bask their toesies, sudding.
    Great barks of ambergris pace
    on borrowed legs, their attenuate limbs
    shorn from grasshoppers hanging
    adherent to their sunken temples.


    IX

    Men bent at gloaming over their sandwiches,
    their hand wenches. Leafy parks keep eyes
    in back, beneath fronds of shame. The workmen
    rise infertile for the homesome honeybuns,
    the laundresses.


    X

    Hideous! The blossoms,
    bloated by the breath of arthropods,
    congregate near shrivelled
    sprinters' legs, their teats
    dug deep into soiled green blankets,
    stretching away with sore red tongues
    from the fangs which ensnare them.


    XI

    Sun-candles unfixed, in swarms
    like aluminum scrap, begloomed
    by lurid labels. A twilit
    flicker, an open invitation
    or a gratuitous confine;
    a red-horned finger turned up
    to the sun's deserted throne.


    XII

    Between sheaths of sightless grasses
    squats most of a rabbit, silent
    for dread. A tan archway leads
    past tender halitosis to
    mama's marination. Here,
    stewed with thistle, locust,
    carrot, and grasshopper,
    a horsefly crawls in its ear.
    Its immobile globes are halved;
    pearly ringlets to grace
    piratical physiognomies.


    XIII

    Jelly and ritual; the syllable
    hopping like whiskers on the asthmatic
    wheeze of methylated spirit,
    the retiring gaze of a codfish.
    Life on a plate. The great old men
    in aspic, my fork, tantalized
    like spaghetti, shies away from
    the altar of its imprecations.


    XIV

    A crystal glass of sputum
    is refrigerated, to pour lead
    over dredged sea life. The
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