my sword: what for⎯                         K
                                                                                                           ♠
my shield: what’s left⎯

                                   because I’ve chewed your death

                                                  back and forth in my smile
                                                  and walked up and down in your dirt

     Desquamation By Exhilation!

                                    [because] where the photograph meets the burn
                                    I’ve learned to revivify: plumbum to

                                                       plumbum, earth to

earth. O Pure Ponderous Lust! O Tower of Stone!
I shall rise and go to a grave-green lake,
     [where] by parkfire
I’ll fix your blood to philosophical flowers


     [What the Heresiarch Remembered about the Sun]

                                    [Part 9♥]

     Because I’d taken it, under cover of darkness,
     when it was not there I’d taken it
     and placed it in a lovely ditch. The ditch
     I’d built out of nothing, out of the picture of things⎯
     I’d knelt down and blindly gashed the ground
     as evening fell and the declensions of animals began.
     A hum swept through the brighter leaves, hung awhile,
     then broke against the deeper lawns.
     Finally, or so it seemed, shadows
     clotted beneath a lack of trees
     until the shadows were the things themselves.