Isaac Dust, born of the dust and returning to dust
Handing over the Bill of Terrorism to the judge
Letting frozen phrases slide around my tongue

into moonlight babies beds
into sawdust halls of law

into realms of embroidered cobra's heads
Who call my name through dense blue forests
on our imaginary continent

The years make
you place an elegant
portrait in the empty chair
where the colossus
announced to faint
Legislatures
The years make
wagers out of cold space
sounding the hunt

I come around
with the back of
my face dragging in
some green water

The cabin is turned over on
the back of Alabama

Red mud rises and I search
drawers of swimming
Surface laws

Who says I can't
Hold you in avalanche wirework

When you name a serial of apologetics
becoming clear only in reverse

Why scrawl any
pattern or
family of bitemarks
or caresses

The illustrator has
children of his own
and loud red
wine to waste

Visiting your birthplace
in your example
suggests antique
weaponry

Through sublime sense
Puritan watershed

My language vanishes
Now only my breath and the sun

The street signs are blank
to celebrate the death of words
The end of poems

The black birds swoop through
clock tower faces
My eyes chase the steam
out of stained glass

I dream of the death of words
Of a sweet reckoning
A silence like music

A mad stone mask waits
in memorized frost on the
blood heavy curtains of ****

Backstage are the petrified
coronas of silver babies whose
ghostpaper hands whisper
wreaths of slavery

I'll be there to dance you past
the ruined barricades
when you surface
from the blackened silver leaf
of buried cathedral roofs
toward the songs that rise
from the orchards
and the draught of blackbirds
who tear from the spires
in your father's gothic prayers