Genre Painting

to wipe the varnish from
its massive antique eye
an array of uniform palps
extending from the lower jaw
balrok en trop its sigil of
ropes became disturbed
the long beds were defiled
by color and the eye descended
from its eons old perch in
the external socket travelling
down inside the body
of the old being
its mind now turned /to
new things
like snowflake machines
which / could be seen

half gaming in the dark
with the sticky oozing voices
half determined by the meaning
of space

the entrance at Venice
long milky with cataracts
and tubing

madrok mated in the still
unerring tibum
the low flat earless thing
mewled
in the thin chambers
under eyelids of stone
the currents
sucked and wept