Light and Dark

 At first we have gravity

torturing raindrops

pummelling towards the field line

where agitated cattle form a circle

and go cross-eyed

comprehending death.

Overhead wires

are carrying gunshots

between Playstations,

cars are looking

for places to crash,

a woman stands on a shoulder

of damp stubble

dreaming of being murdered.

The sky is now full of fruit bats

trapeze artists

thrushes in full song

hurricanes of broken glass.

Everywhere rabbits

are battling the planet,

mice are worshipping the moon.

Worms declare their form of war

on the ragged sunset.

Two men stand back to back

on a small dark island

refusing to interrupt atrocities.

The endless dead

lie undissolved

blackened with rot

and puffball spores.

The horizon fills with brutes

whirring through the dusk.

These are the hunchbacks

who dream of nail bombs and semen.

They are planning

to trade their limbs

for magic spells.

In the cigarette ends of battle

a crow dismantles a pigeon.

His omniscient God

of calamity and cannibalism

is a pair of discarded spectacles.

And you are there, my friend,

in blueness

in stillness

in your wet silk

in the furnace of your calm.

You are that star

called Wormwood

neither real nor unreal,

the last blossom from a polluted rock

and I, a lean coyote.

In this bright silence

beyond the twisted wire

and maddening dark,

out of our bodies’ prisons

we can rise,

a single candle flame

that builds and burns

with beauty in the night.