I carry home a hollow stone in which my brood will wallow.

From silk and velvet flames 

her arm reached out, the 

baptist's head long withered 

upon the platter with 

bat perched o'er its skull...

"Champagne anyone?"

The kiss of the grave

is an empty table

with candle quotation marks.

In superior moments, my vision

is faire bosse neuve, that is,

like touching a hunchback's hump

for good luck, while my mind

does the Bossa Nova.

As the cantatrix surfs 

on a wave of her own young, 

the notes spread out

between the thin blades 

where she has attached her singing.

Again the satyr quits the quiet waters, but the nymphs

are swift, or waiting, and the ground is dry and brown.

Every proposition seems external. 

Knees and elbows, these 

scoops and cones are mine.

Does a ghost attend my mind?

Do ghosts attend honey lanterns 

in the mirror of my selfish sweetness

as bats ascend my hat in the rain?

There are salves and ointments to accompany its fall. 

The mineral eye attenuated by its own substance

will not belabor the tumescence of the non-existent organs,

the turtle's torso's metallic burgeoning. 

In the haze and candor of the war, my star

was but a pin-prick, but its durable pain

led me on through the unbearable trenches,

their letters trampled underfoot.

What is ever released here?

When you speak, the flies flee from your mustache!

A black hole, and a white hole,

my mind finds no troth between them.

In the paper porch, a zigzag echo

bequeaths a formless fluff

to a black caption.

Your elaborating masks, are heavy, difficult,

but as I step away, I see that the green musketeer

has removed his felt blood stain,

now a shadow for a pearl.

I AM THE BACHELOR OF ISRAEL.

Judge or jeweler,

plaintiff or thief?

If the loupe and gavel are one,

what use the handkerchief?

Soon I will be strong enough

to acquire the burden of meaning,

or at least, the joys of translation.

In youth, rebellious, its name

was a question.