Look.

He was just very enthusiastic about
being a fireman. He was always on
time and he never stole anything.

That's all I wanna say about it.

He never touched nobody or nothing.

That's all.
Really.
And stop calling.

There is a beetle on the high street,
pushing the sun along at a fraction-
0f-a-mile-per-hour. He is pondering
his plans for the summer.
Perhaps different venues?
Perhaps different dung?
But he knows it's all foolishness.
He never goes anywhere.

Then a god falls out of the sky.
Not a particularly large one,
a medium-sized god as far as
they go. Roughly human-
shaped. Not counting those
streaming banners of fire
that pour from his eyes.
Few humans have burning eyes.

A dagger drips from an open
wound and he clenches his
blood (it is his own blood) in his hand.
More are coming he realizes.
All of them. And he's quite
correct. Without trumpets or
lights or choruses or bowls or
scrolls, it starts to rain.

The beetle pauses in his
pilgrimage to survey the
man underneath the god's feet.
A hand in a crater of asphalt
with a keen, nigh-inaudible
wheeze of breath. A cough
and a choke.
And the beetle scuttles on.

They fall from clouds that aren't,
I mean, actually in the sky. They crush
buildings and businessmen, They
eat fountains. They descend into an
unthinkable and unthinking
age like a dizzied chorus that cannot
pick up on the beat. Purple sash
and green helm, They build mountains.

Teeth chip around the clay- the men
and women- like fireworks.
The gods' great works resolve
like a finished slider puzzle, like the
back of the sun. Mannequins watch
the moving marble for a moment.
But the Mutes eventually find a voice,
they shout, they run into the fray.

Tantalus' mouth fills with
wine. The beetle walks around his
head. Sisyphus' back was broken
by a boulder. The poor little fellow
descends into an inferno and
climbs the devil's back like a
Purgative mountaineer. Such struggle,
thinks he, to have to take a detour.

Sky sets fire to the shell pink
sun at night.

The liquid spheres engulf ideas
on a dry stretch of ocean.

Clouds splinter in a victor's hands,
are frozen shut.

and everything sinks back home
in the middle of a wor

Oh madam!,
Red of face and quick of word.
I must admit the father
sees no one today.
He has taken (white of face
and singly staring) ill and
thus has closed the box.
There must be no confession
while he lingers so
within.

Who knows what he might say!
Who knows what sins he might forgive!

"Let the ants toil freely," I heard
him declare, "while the birds
mend their fractured flight."

Now, until Our Father deems
it fit our father ours
should heal the sick, I most repentant
ask you hold it in.

Texan-Georgian-Jews
Dance around a Christmas tree.
Forty minutes gone.

The lady in violet waits
by Arab candle light for the sounding
of twenty-one silver bells.

Seven white divisions led
by four black stars.

Her stories feed the drowsy
like a stoppered angel
in the axe-man's hands.

"This s.o.b. has got Tourette's.
Who knows what he might say? We'd better
Get him under before he rises.
Sterilize something fast!"

I'm awake for the time being. When sleep comes
I shall play the perfect display of my bacillus. Reposing
On the white table like a necrotic pieta. Off to my
Left I can hear those touchstones spinning in fine sockets,
Sterilizing my hands by binding my feet. Soon I will be
A paragon of grunting celluloid, clutched at by
Heated hearts to wrinkle and shear.
I can already taste the cleanser.

Rubber foam, steel clamp and tongue depressor.
Excise the black portions with a serrated life,
You might as well. Because it doesn't matter
How much morphine sits in the delirium drip.
I'm still alive: the crush and blink in Boris Karloff eyes.

When I gather up my self in the morning.
I will be instructed to take all Ten a day
And check in regularly. Despite the cold,
Despite the heat, the embryo has quite failed.

It was a fortunate evening
I chose to stroll out. Somewhat cold
and cloying soft for recent rain.

The grass arched speculative at me
the better to see Godot on his way to an appointment.
Just so, the stage light
mixed its ponderous firmaments
to a more even pigment.

I gazed upward at the longing, doleful
eye and felt the monochrome sigh of
that girl who sits upon the air.
She directs her lambent limelight
half-heartedly for she only reads the script by candlelight.

You can see her strolling over gondoliers
or pausing on the running man  in a
nineteen-forties travel film with all
the ubiquitous pains of
a villain in a childhood mystery.
A bleating bulb that never burns the eye.