Postcard 167

They are terrified correctly. They are right to fear
They seed the country impotent and scrape the fertile dirt
with crooked tin, mountain stripped
See their naked effluvia!

Their death is straight and hollow lead pipe madness
Who tosses babies from walls?
Who cuts trees for scaffolding?
Who spites the moon and all its red tendrils?
Theirs is a voidless void that stares not back

Only true power is create:
the rotting leaves unburied,
the awe-striking spin of sky, the belly-ripe fruits
stinking sweet about the feet of tree

Every mortised structure, every law
every prison, every lawn -- a feeble
neutered pushback against decay
They are right to be terrified

They cooked up their Lysol but
the wicked world rots away
the wicked world rots richly away
The world rots rich and glorious away
bleeds life between its wicked legs

Postcard 166

Hung high and sweeping,
the curtains are thick with concealment
Conceal is what they are hung for

Every fold rolls into darkness
Caravaggio, velvet close
That there is drama is withheld

The lovely terror of warm thighs in soft tension
Around every downcast Christ, around every looseheaded John
is darkness bound tenebrism. In our language a temple is a woman

Your dress darling,
light caress of your padding footfall,
wraps itself in holy mysteries confounding

Confound me --
curtains reveal curtains
folds roll into new folds

There is no harm in some secrets -- only catastrophe
From blue, from purple, from scarlet twisted fine, from sin concealed
rent but by jealous hands. What would be revealed?

Curling toes, will of night
Timorous flesh-thick femurs -- mighty bone
A window...