To sit arrayed
and task consumed
by the edge of a window,
the world as fire
stepping free of winter's stain,
jutting fingers of light
to a basement ledge
then allowing their
foggy movement to
displace dust's circle
as it has come
to be known
over the last
five months,
is to come as
near as possible
to the brink
of private
sanity.
[50]
SILVER COINS
Seen the whores in doorsteps,
slack, crouched as packing crates
behind their quiet wardrobe lamps,
inset like a skeleton's crown
there to bend our will,
provide passageways to power and suggestion;
the winding entrance to rouged
light flickering with powdered flesh
yellow of gold,
then black to ivory
a frightful circus in a palace of turn
within the grate of execution.
[51]
SENTRY
In Edvard Munch's painting, The Scream, eyes
are grouped as discs, almost rotund arches,
much as suns breaking over an eclipsed wall.
Hollows, jittery the bridge a creamed escape
careening the soul madly backward
a pastel gathering sky -
water rivulets where two solitary, graven figures
seem indulging a flaccid, breaking stream.
[52]