En l’an trentiesme do mon aage
    Que toutes mes hontes j’ay beues…


Pipit sate upright in her chair
     Some distance from where I was sitting;
Views of the Oxford Colleges
     Lay on the table, with the knitting.

Daguerreotypes and silhouettes,
     Her grandfather and great great aunts,
Supported on the mantelpiece
     An Invitation to the Dance.

     . . . . .

I shall not want Honour in Heaven
     For I shall meet Sir Philip Sidney
And have talk with Coriolanus
     And other heroes of that kidney.

I shall not want Capital in Heaven
     For I shall meet Sir Alfred Mond.
We two shall lie together, lapt
     In a five per cent. Exchequer Bond.

I shall not want Society in Heaven,
     Lucretia Borgia shall be my Bride;
Her anecdotes will be more amusing
     Than Pipit’s experience could provide.

I shall not want Pipit in Heaven:
     Madame Blavatsky will instruct me
In the Seven Sacred Trances;
     Piccarda de Donati will conduct me.

     . . . . .

But where is the penny world I bought
     To eat with Pipit behind the screen?
The red-eyed scavengers are creeping
     From Kentish Town and Golder’s Green;

Where are the eagles and the trumpets?

     Buried beneath some snow-deep Alps.
Over buttered scones and crumpets
     Weeping, weeping multitudes
Droop in a hundred A.B.C.’s

Sedition is not just patina-ed oil paintings
mobs not just lithographs
treason not mere fading daguerreotypes

Sedition is chat rooms and airwaves of mistruth and its taintin-gs
mobs are our friends and neighbors turned bands of riff-raffs
treason, the weaponization of dog whistles and stereotypes

Sedition is here now
mobs are the so-called militia of the present
treason is happening now

It will be one for history books now
be present and accounted for
be the United States of America, treading down snakes

Fading falling daguerreotypes
litter the Montmarte of
my fuzzy imagination, after
Isis bombs a train station.
Polizei! Polizei! Polizei!
Gendarmerie! Gendarmerie! Gendarmerie!
Help! I...they need somebody, in three
Separate languages, can't the world see?
The capital is under seige.
What's next,
But the predictable.
Fear, fearmongering, fearmonsters,
Fuckit,
What's now,
Give 'em all a beer.
C'est la guerre

There are prints on the
insides of my eyelids.
Daguerreotypes for a
stereopticon.
The faces of people
with no smiles
Sepia tones
3D, but ìn a way
That you can tell is phony
Fake like blue roses
Left many yesterdays
On a grave,
Petals faded and cracked
Leaves missing from
The Styrofoam wreath.
Lost when the windstorm
Blew by.

My eyes open.
The dream gone.
All I see is black.
Black as raven feathers,
Black as a roadkill cat,
(All 9 lives gone)
Black as the deepest space,
Blackness that can only be seen
On the inside of a box

Buried

Six

Feet