warm of sun through percolator cloud
      waft of wind stale, flat on surface
  all-fours;
   mezzotint of sky blooms like an aged flower across the skirt of the dawn
     lingering the acrobat hurtling
across hideous moonlight.

   there is an exhausted sundial
in the feeble aurora. one Wednesday
   yet all too many a day, tumble
of the calendar and the pompous talk
    of clammy water over the pockmarked
streets from yesterday's surfeit rain.
    
i enter the hellish car fostering
   the sun's fervor in the subcompact
like a tiny universe, constellations of
    sweat on my forehead, a crumpled
  carton of Marlboro in my pocket
   whiff of dried leaf clinging to finger
     this formidable silence across
      the lounging Mahogany, on the road
treading homeward — caught in
     wave of the next moment,
    underneath the rain of a once tear
shed facing walls slouching towards
  despondent sheets and scrunched body;
claimed whoever sees the
    face of indelible yesterday, tremulous aspen tree dressed with cicatrices of old,
  birds unraveling incarnadine wound from
     upheaval of scabs, disheveled dog
  naked without any reason at all,
         weak in dog-joints and reeking
in dog-flesh carrying on his back the
   supremacy of the sun,
  
i too, here, homebound and downtown
    sings sleepy the reveille,
   bridging the darkness there
    letting in all aches and dangerous
  playthings for strange men, open

   the gates, mother, the pearl
of detergent I smell, in my hands shaped
     cleverly, the rust of gate
and the saw-tooth music grating the
   afternoon frightened and small,
resigned to bed; dark's afterthought.