Still desperately waiting
For the world to end
The fence pale knock
In a rising morning gust
Not quite a harbinger
But with that frisson
Of things falling out of order
The window almost stuck
In sprawling autumn colours
Barked knuckles when it at last slips
Fist warm iron against your lips
The map an ingrained isthmus
In a glorious kind of burgeoning
I saw an angel in the words
Scratched away til it had fled
Feathers with the weight
Of marble
The uncouth and
Last immortal remainder
This is a trifle
The blood of damson plums
Bleeding to the filigree of sponge
And that quick-frozen, artificed desert
Off the Ross Sea ice shelf
Penguins in the lee
Of waves startled to a surprise
-ing stillness
White as Hiroshima, and
Through an extenuating season
In Nagasaki the cherry blossoms curling
I counted all the dead
It was too many
I counted just the one
It was enough
The fuselage
Between your legs
Whore red
In the photograph
The sky has a fresh-cut perm
From the wedge of door, an ammonia waft
As if Simoni scraped
His fingers through the paint
Of God’s unsatisfactory hair
Hands not quite done
Too desperately outstretched
Then was called away
From these whited palisades
By cattle-truck to attend
His mother’s persistent coiffure
Tall as cumulus and the blue-grey
Of battles everywhere
In an inappropriately shaped box
Laid to rest
