if but we sung, as enlisted to war,
proud to fix it, shell-shocked: atheists’ wisdom, plural sacrifices, the man as
forsaken’d:
grandpa’s dream, grandmother’s
aches, the son to fires, adrift a blue horizon—mad morbid carnivals, the
shoebill clown, houses haunted made humble.
mother’s cliff, terrors, those
foreign arms, Japanese witnesses.
cleaving to honor, the soul at flight,
those lights as curses, the clown running with caimans—
to visit darkness, the bark is
underseas, the leaf is atop an ocean—
rulers confess, the lake is sulfur,
years disrupting purgatory.
imagine delights, to conjure up affections,
if soreness has ruled the kingdom: inner Beethoven, child prodigies, the Mozart
struggle;
cymbals clanging, chimes as voices,
the cat purring near the refrigerator—if but the moon, to dine with innocence
both to realize our harvest:
dreams to impassion, laughs affix to
a cathedral:
minutes with thoughts, seconds with
disdain, a photographic diary: children in sandboxes, manipulators helping, if the
music would heal.
(rabbinic grace, rabbits transformed,
the irresistible plight. to die shivering, lost in Ghana, fleeing, made favored,
afloat a thousand kilometers. the red essence, the red highlights, enormous
elation: to befriend a snail, that fragile shell, while feeding a caterpillar;
wherewith, those five books, the tale as sung, whereby, a brain disappears. to
erect a fortress, a mental encyclopedia, hearts about, wired to triple thumps.
that volt chasing, the demon by plights, the somber nightmare: Pentateuch
magnets, the mountain by olives, the wreckage by dreams. our pains swimming,
our swamps swooshing, our solitaries swooning; to love as dying, our last vows,
Holocaust living in spirits.)
