all those miracles at your dainty feet
have all the naked and the marooned
in a fathom of kelp beds on a spool
of Saturn.
We gather at the dearth of our perpetual
diaspora. Long in the wrong tooth, where the stars
misbehave to get to the harsh Truth.
so many moons left unconquered
a spittoon of tombstones
believing in raw bones
and Abigail's.

II

just a tooth in the Sun, hooked where pavilions
congregate like hot salmon clouds of Destiny, forked-
where the Anguish Blooms like a tyranny in a Night Poem
gloating in the Pond of our Ponderous Conundrums…
slumming with pearls of impenetrable disarray
where our open ghosts are bargained
on the altar of a too distant Star.

And
sleep has the meaning
in its grasp
but nobody knows
how to sleep
when it
counts.

where you're Not
so much at
last.