The dead

are desolate turning points out in the snow

at 1 a.m.

The living

are sulfur sticks in old fairy tales

of childhood

The tenement houses bristle,

steer through time and blood,

filled with vermin and self-waste

The ships rest in the oceans

like gigantic compass needles

The bathhouses offer gentle drowning

in chlorinated water

Ragas rise like solar eruptions

over India

The sheet metal secretaires of highways

empty themselves

like vomit

over parking lots and farmyards

Metal bodies gleam in the moonlight,

aimless, blind

Languages retreat

back into the nocturnal songs

of Morgensternian fish

How could John Lennon

suddenly,

in the back of a police car,

be reduced to a spilled amoeba,

all entrails at once bewildered

The puddles speak loudly at dusk

as the trains fly by, infrastructured,

high upon their embankments;

fateful movements over receding coordinates