Down through town, Sunday cracks
Amorous birds, preening whiskers,
Pecking at passion fruit and mulberry
Buckles on shoes, embroidered skirt,
Gold clasp on waist and lovely bones
Draw the curtain for the sun
At Mercy’s hospital
Anaesthetized patients subdued in green gowns
Flock in fields of death
Shun the sky
And stalk the earth
Elsewhere,
Virginity circles coyly
Within woolen garments
As desire rises
Child bearing hips heave;
And stocking the sun
When black and blue with cold
Is a frog!
Skyscrapers rise to comb the sky, the clouds
And for the wealthy living in tall stories
That doubt the sky
A palette of rubies pins the damp weather.
Technology hallucinates
Crucified on disposable diapers
Ozone layers and flying cockroaches
Tombstones flourish with arms and ammunition
And man dreams of natural death
And silent guns
Marriage to women and pink gummed babies
Sisters make love, fathers rape and teachers abuse
And in downtown, Clara’s aborted foetus
Joins the trash in black plastic bags
To be recycled
Vulnerable to the sweetness of tongue
To flesh eating viruses
And to loaded guns in hands.
The leaf bud quivers
King Island and Cleveland amuse
Counting on roller coasters
To dilate pupils and churn stomachs
And on the way back on I-75
A fading pulse of a wild rabbit
Or a crossing dear
And tonight again we shall lie
Thigh against thigh
Panting furiously into the night
To bring forth yet another child
Blotting out the naked ferocity
Embossed in this city
