"No More Peripheral Vision"

L'Amour peintre

Saloniki

        I

At Saloniki
 the Empress lacks
Corybantes to
    obscure her purple.

Chlorus comes but

her head must go.

Harsh light
   shoves her down
 saltless hills.

          II

We lost five weeks and
 columned a dread span,
 heads lost in 

 Wednesday's van.

 White horses stride past.
       

In shade they cast sight

to grim alloyed light.

Île de la Cité

Barricades glitter like shrapnel of fallen stars.
Bayonets flash Basilisk grins in the square.

A hidden arc of love stretches across metallic rubble.
Pink scarf clouds drift above unseen by clerks.

A mother's sigh hovers noiseless over the jet Seine.
Two gamin scatter as heaven shakes their reflections on dark water.

Thieves treasure daylight when sons slight mothers.
On it goes, silent as shushed sighs, to La Santé.

Sister Amalie cries.
The rope is taut.
No bead, no hosanna,
can loose Justitia's collar.

                                Let us pray for the grace
                                of every gutted chest's hollow. 

                                Light a candle of mercy
                                to hush the amputee's bellow.
                                                 
     

Sensibility

 
     It dawns slowly. Claudia wished her sense and the world were more harmonious. 

   She grew tired of the wait. Wishes without constellar aid equal overreach or, put

   poetically, a fall. Like meteors they consume themselves before touching ground. 

   Claudia never touched for groping. Never spoke for shouting. Her ears were cupped 

   by the din of her own bell. The bell rings and, sadly, dinner's never served.

   
                     A sensibility that starves makes hours of seconds.

Cloud Mirror