Herod versus the daisies

If you can count
I will live
on the head
of a pin
or on its point 
where the rent is cheaper

Antipas won three break points
at Tiberias stadium, the dead
in their coracles, chagrined underneath
it’s too late to cry
I poured away the milk
the sink’s throat’s ugly gurgling
saliva slick at the side
of your mouth
where every day betrayal sleeps

The wind rails
at everything that stands to oppose it
fly screens stammer
the blue-bottle’s sermon drone confused
how it got to this enclosing side
through the criss-cross interstices
enticed by slow decay
that noxious pyrethrum smell
as if a field of daisies died
to kill a lost insect
Published
Categorized as Poems Tagged