silvery claw marks

on a sixth-plate daguerreotype,

in a foresting chamber study.

a grandfather clock holding its

hands up to its pendulating face--

after an oil lamp is trimmed.

as that daguerreotype's, daguerreotype  

is torn to the size of letters, cannibalized

by The Word/the word/words...

made fleshless, a handwriting

analysis

examined by tactically glowing

horns.

snow is the choral arrangement

of soil--the breadbasket of

harmonium.

dispersed as pistils in every

grain of soil.

the profile of a woman in labor--

leaving her face on both sides of

a hospital pillow.

a twig's weighted sixfold bob,

a cardinal's seventh alighting.

dusting a spire of snow.

there's a black bar glister--

that strikes between the

flippant poles, of this steady

rate of rain.

while bone dry with a rain that

has letup its old footage, a present

nonevent.

an encinctured iris shot.

a metropolis' occulted pedestrians--

produce photographic negatives,

between their: A to B.

densified luminaries aping the nosiness

of the smallest village, with supposed

anonymity.

from oversaturated death stares, to the

preternatural speed reads of body language.

where that other is still a dwarf of distance.

foggy wavelets of Bernini's

marble cloth, drape over an LED

street light's pyramidion.

whose diffuse base softens its

street level aftermath.

foreshortened--

charcoal stick tree limbs, drafted

to their particular & conclusive

outreaches.

protruding through artificial light--

as if by the overworked frictious

of fingertips.

scrooge's candy cane takes

another adaptational lick.

whose twining red has gone

thru the thinnest sugary white.

supporting the weight of three

unseen visitations, where he's

the reigning host of a fourth

dimensional mime.

his right hand waving down a

glunch, then waving up a smile.

an unsharpened no.2 pencil--with a

half-chewed pink head, nary scalp itch.

pencils up...five minutes in, fifteen questions

of cardinal truth.

examination--subject: nondescript, grade:

nondescript, ambiguity: satisfactory.

pupil slowly drags his chair backward--after

holding both hands up for permission.

the wooden board soring his ***, remains studded

underneath, with undetected gum-chewing.

he walks to the front of the classroom, & places his

no.2 pencil in a manual pencil sharpener.

working it like a meat grinder, in this superimposition

of silence.

his teacher then excuses herself from a potpourri of

free ranging doodoo.

in a hail of reprimands--her pupil is banished back

to his test sheet.

where the excess of cleaning agents applied by the

school's custodian, probe his sense of smell made

vulnerable.

enter the metallic smell of blood.

as he undergoes a fountainous nosebleed--grabbing

the blank test sheet, to thwart the gush.

on sight...his teacher isn't sure whether to send him

to the principle, or the nurse.