Eight Verses
Midnight nears the clock clicks its heels
And the birds go wandering home
To empty nests in cardboard houses
Built on vapor smoke and foam
Where furniture and flesh court dust and rust
Together and alone
Like trees falling in the forest, no one listens
What happens in the night time
After the sun washes its hands
Of everything yellow light prevents
From the dangers of the dance
Of darkness uninhibited
Do you even want to take that chance?
You might wind up on a list of missing persons
Black crows beckon from their ledges
High above the ground
They shake the quiet they've gathered
From their wings and scratch out sounds
Which terrify all passers-by
The truth is hard to hear once it's found
Then they swoop like angels burned off Jacob's ladder
The holy man announced his plan
To turn wine back into water
He was strung up by the drunken mob
Chanting the time for miracles is over
They wrapped his body in newspaper
And burned him in the words he could not alter
Saying unto a mirror one should never try to flatter
Sunlight rummages the beach
And cleans out hollow shells
The sand flames sufficiently heating
The shadows of lonely souls
Walking on the fringe of waves
Which pounce and fade farewell
To spoil a hope which springs eternally on the surface
The scientific poet dresses up
His images with the facts
He hangs on chains from certificates
In silver frames behind smoked glass
He writes everything that has yet to occur
Has already happened in the past
We elevate wise men by digging ditches
Soldiers fill their pails with steam
For the bulletshell-like spines
While trees live and die repeatedly in rings
Which mark the march of time
It crawls by slowly for those entrenched
And for others at speeds unkind
While soliloquies to skulls become confessions
The box we would have distance hold
A lifetime without blame
Is too heavy for the skyway
Without faith-chariots and chains
Although it bloomed on an ancient tongue
Nothing yet from the nothing every came
We bury our answers six feet beneath our questions