It’s hot in this red room,
inside the beating heart of the ritual, explosive

We are serious in the same way,
my catalytic converter and I.

I’ve looked under the cloud of my heart,
unraveled its complicated net of veins.

 

menorah’s Arab cousin, flares from manarat,
or lighthouse, in whose heart is harbored nar.

All right we can’t repeat the past
don’t want to bones are in the grass

Here is a common heresy:
Things are Bleak.

Nel mezzo del cammin what one finds is beans
and wrinkled cabbage and an awful case
of ambling vacuity, an affliction resembling

It’s the rhythm and small plosive bombs in the mouth,
on the lips of the whisperer (me) who would like
in the best of all possible worlds to rhyme

Bliss. Sits bright and bolt and lightening on the pillows
in the bed. The Maharishi said on days
like this one never minds. I’m fond, though, of the wheedle

All ashen-tongued and peacock-eyed, Juno,
the goddess of the marriage bed, the gray
of heart, betrayed a thousand splendid ways

the splendid fall of fabled empire-up here, at night,

The dogs are blind and beautiful. A violet
moment hovers overhead, the evening
shadows fill with figured intimations .

Lines and sheets of white are blown, light conjugations,
in layered, flustered carousels and large