Death & Camellias

The fence buckles

By a camellia’s weight

A cloying honeysuckle breath

Calls wilted petals falling

As if long drought surceased

In a tea cup’s avalanche

Jawbones prow the earth

A grimace clowned and sidelong 

As if this were once a circus tent

Not a marshalling yard

Where brays anxious met

The impelling silence

Of hammers and serrations

When the earth uproots

In trenchant cascades

The ivy hideous, shivering

A wave, bent on the fulcrum’s back

In upheaval’s raw display

I wonder what pretty monsters

From desiccate honeycombs

In husk pale efflorations

From the secret earth, arise

Sunday’s astronaut

An echo in
The fishbowl glass
I think I mean, a reflection
Of the bluely, monstrous rising earth
Cars passing, Sunday slow
The dry cereal sound
Of the world rigidly consumed
Locked jaw, gravel stoic
Mouse hunger, too lazy yet
To go for milk, cat food
Croissants stale
As a morning waning moon
The marks of trammelled sleep
Still in your face
The coffee tastes
Almost like pollution