“a starless galaxy carrying gas and shrouded in dark matter”

a townless galaxy
rich in sulfur

a gas cloud plummeting towards the milky way         home

you are reminded and now pale peels off you, shaved as ice

the implosion completes itself in four ways
replicated by the gravitational lens
of something heavier than itself

time in time in time rich in sulfur and algae blooms

everything beneath the meniscus
heavier than itself

drowning in algae blooms

purple mollusks, sardines
sea lions
swallowed by forests of kelp
guts full of domoic acid and forget

we eat the toxin-laced fish
and cannot talk about what we wanted to talk about

star matter, rich in sulfur
rich in

dark matter, heavier than starless towns

home
heavier than itself

toxin laced, eating and drowning
on matterless stars

Color’s dervish, wanton rays
bark big waves out to little eyes -
surmise that they could live so bright,
or cut their burden down in middle flight
with Pantone Answer. Limber fantasies
hung dainty on the wire, we blast
a spectrum: chilling op-eds,
townless crier making hay
from sunny days’ hot take.

Alarm us! Twist like windy satchels
full of Great Divide
between the Haves and Left-Behind.
And as the bank vanishes wage,
we colors come of age
in numbers borne to rap
the sounding toll upon its steady head
and leave for dead his monuments
to Avarice, Big Dollar pulled in tow -
it’s too much meat, you know.
Too sufferful for show
when corny love could fit the bill:
high-mounting, climbing still.

Arrest the cold diversions from
your living-time and feel the sun
whenever possible; the harbingers
of war will tremble color-ward
and drop the gun.