Demented Particulars

Hear the banal season shear her wool.

The car and bus pay homage to her graces.

The anonymous mechanics in dreary grease

Set spirals out to heal the sick, who then ferment like tea.

What shatters, remains in pieces upon the carpet shore.

Here a bird or two in bonnets and black shoes

Tune up the orchestra of heavy-heavy days

And serenade the leaf-blowers with lament and craze.

Speak this mood around, blast you,

Pitchforks high and measured.

One man in a hat is code, two men in one hat means

One has gone for cigarettes or coal. Still

It is an otherwise calm evening. Our hero hears

Her song. A twittering of mops, bloodstained receipt

Someone’s sweeping up for love. Don’t miss this

One crumb or everything’s changed. Deranged upon

A wool sweater. Or a letter to the heart and dagger tattoo

Of things, worshipful things carrying baskets of knives

To pray on. Dear Counselor, beat back against –

The music is too loud. Such metal is divine.

Sweet Zeus of the guitar solo, turn for turn it until

The concrete comes to powder. I’ll snort the end of days

As all the quiet onlookers heft halos to the sky.

So that’s it, white dwarf, the whale impinged,

The thing upon a mat of weak grass and manure

Buzzing. You hear that? The bodies in the music.

I have great things to say about that, sound of

Constructed materials, goat wig, water coupling

With the statue in the fountain, her great gears

And fish-spew and cocktails to obedience.

Yet still the hats linger. Incomprehensible theater

Of flea scratch on a dog and sunset on fish market.

Seeds and sounds of marching, popping from the soil

To make it all cook, shady, perpetual like smoke

And hope and fishing line. Hear me, hear me train,

Crack the dark with your rail and headlamp,

The moon is filled with clippings. She is a dustpan

Of left over shearing. Let’s hope no one notices.

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