I
Green dragon eye through gauze
Beyond curtains. Silent parade of yellow
Eyes, marching down
Drifting street. Lilac-ochre sky
At midnight, swaddled in nests of
Shadows. Layered nights of hot
Cotton sheets.

At the market:
Apricots and blackberries.

The sea beyond skies.

II
I am the goddess of wishes.
My home a bubble the color of
Spring. My eyes innumerable
As black crows roosting at dusk, or
Dozing battalions of tulips
Held tight in the frozen dream.

III
I am the ax that cleaves shadows.
The white bee that clarifies dust.
I am the brown song within the
Green root, the absence between
The gray pencil and the frozen white
Page.

IV
One life existed while we were sleeping,
Another when we were awake. It was no good
Trying to merge, mingle or sever the two. We
Submerged our identities once, for an instant
And drowned. You have no idea what
We proved.


V
Black-and-white rainbow.
Fine details captured on paper by light
And lens. Tiny cliffs in the mountain.
Tiny figures atop cliffs. Invisible
Witches in the toothless black caves, chewing
Roots. The trees had faces
Then and arms that bled.

VI
A sojourn to hell. The white mountain
Excavated by machinery, yielding diamonds
Of death. A church made of human skulls,
Inlaid with knuckles and bones.
The sheer weight of ideas,
Drunken stumbling -- the fall into snow.
The sheer, heartless purity of ice.

VII
The vast morrow. A cocoon of blind eyes.
Yellow pools. Hiss of smoke, ululation
Of wave-shadows within a crystalline heart
On the bereft street. The street turned inside
Out, the house emptied of knick-knacks.
The soul that was sold to someone else.

VIII
Dutiful uniforms and traction. Snake traces of
Boots in the autoless wilderness.
The growl, the sand, the slide into corruption.
Silence, the only cure.

IX
Laughter without source in the great
Blessing embracing the one.
Dark lattices scaled by ghosts.
White hats made of smoke.
Human voices in the
Abyss.


X
The blood within kisses.
Anemic aftermath of stone.
Alone in the swirling dusk
Of gnarled muscle and bone.
The birth of grass from granite.
The white screens part
Behind curtains. The eternal mask,
Permanent now and the white truth
Of your name,
Which has been forgotten

By the flame.