Drape the pall across the glass,

Velvet and sedentary, quiet

Dust collects on every facile hair

And makes the dark a duke

With a moat of air and sleep

Surrounded by towers and bastions

Of pane and metal sheen,

Embossed with crests of crescents and lions argent

Unicorns rampant, a geometrical sign for Euclid

Narcissus wanted nothing more

Than this pale light: it assuages fear,

Confuses the enamel from the surface.

Matter creeps and sits with feline feet

To gently penetrate our dreaming

Like a hidden kleptomaniac

An inner gleam, Vestural, guarded

a gesture sets it into movement

in the heart of the grey,

in the coppice of sentiment,

incandescent despite the gusts

that I protect myself through the tribulation

it is tripe, a sordid quip—espalier!

Flotsam on the tide of nothingness, no force

Since those luddites, clean with knives

And armed in samite, were targets to sanforise

Since we knew all needed to be sanitary,

We became apocrypha

Expressive by way of habit,

Contained by our superfluousness,

Careful with our catatonics,

opportune, when the moment took us,

illegitimate, useless

weaving afterimages,

conceiving demons of the ether,

searching for that invisible isthmus

to the halls of the great dreaming kraken

or anything as full, an orchard

where there is motion, where there is

no expectation of progress but placid

internment where the bonds are silken blonde

and we smile and swim in our gestation.

All this is illusory? Indeed.

The cruel juxtaposition of this

And the Exemplars of Truth who wipe

Away all erudite concerns,

Sweep up all the esoteric, erotica, arcana,

And leave us with a mantra of your good sleep

Your petits morts without elegy

So pull down the casket lid

Exact the tribute from each nailhead

Encase me in time slot and category.

As long as I am dead to you

I am safe from all Zoroastrian fires

I am not drawn to the figure in the cards,

Wilful and swelled with portents,

A construction of fickle faery houses,

That kiss and take flight, taking the heart

Injecting the lymph nodes with beautiful snow

Like white birds spinning under the channel,

Like great winds of dripping flame in the vesicles

Because they are Inexact,

Altogether too incendiary for the True hardness,

We suffer a fatal descent where we do not end,

We overbalance and fall,

Missing the moss and slipping over sand,

And sandpaper canvases

That are all the sliding, hurtling walls of the abyss…

Spare me the cannon, if you can

Bear me with jet and carnations

That overlap like angel’s scales

Conceal from my eyes the ground and the sky,

And every concern there ever was,

Replace the windows of my soul with exquisite jewels,

spontaneously leaf-fashioned they should be,

Cavalier in their instant friendliness,

Flashing for an unending moment,

Dazzled across the ages of never waiting.