The morning
is the harrow of the Apocalypse
dragged across the cornea

The day
is a blanket of pig iron
pulled up to the chin
over virginal truths
& reeking customs

At its deepest,
everything can be heard through twelve walls

The number of neighbors
is the degrees of hell

Bodies
are appropriations of flesh and blood

Three officials
with cigarettes & prayers
move in darkness & diaries,
seeking reconciliation

Twenty-four bitterns
sit in judgment
over seven human, all-too-human
miseries

Breakers & cinemas stand as
“stations of the breath”

The most coveted
is a circular proof
in the heart of hunger,
hidden in a passage of anguish

Our graves are frogs in the dew,
motionless at the end of the road

Saint Birgitta & Swedenborg rattle past,
—unaware of one another—
through downtown in the same subway car;
both silenced by psychotropics,
reeking of unwashed bodies,
drunk on spiteful gnome-drenched water,
while the Present draws a final breath
and closes in like an oyster
around tracts and holy guesses