I'm out on the thin branches of the tree
trying to trace the stars,
Luna, stalked by Mars
on this summery night in autumn.
The dark music swells,
silvery as a razor
and I shiver.
-repeatedly.
Because that's all I've got,
a constellation stretched tight as a wire,
but not yet snapped.
A man stands bleeding
under a spotlight,
pierced;
and gleaming.
Listening:
The whispers say
Tell us, tell us what we want to hear.
It's all right to lie....
we can make it into truth,
tell us.
tell us.
--
tell us.
A woman sits,
the wings of her shoulders
pressed against the wall
in a stale silent room.
It's been dark for hours,
but the heat remains.
A dry ache at the back of her throat.
Alone.
For the night for the week
for a year or two or three or four
ever?
A man and a woman sit
calmly watching the report.
They've eaten well, and sensibly.
Pleasant flavors
linger on the tongue.
A cat lies, half curled in her lap,
purring, warm, and silky.
On the screen
a crouching soldier fires his special gun
through the window of a house,
a hyperbaric round
that burns up all the air inside.
So the house implodes and collapses.
Because Nature abhors a vacuum.
The neighbors' homes untouched,
it's very precise you see,
a scalpel not a hammer.
A branch,
shed or broken miles from here
far from home.
Tossed and smoothed
on the grit of this relentless shore.
Bleached and knobby,
a crooked monster's bone
that fits the hand
like a favorite tool.
It's just a stick,
a pale piece of driftwood,
carried for a while,
caressed,
scribing arcs in the sand
that vanish in a moment.
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