they look down, lantern-like
at weary angles with the weary world obtuse
She follows them with long strides. She shears
She pursues strident and acute
The paper clothed ground peels up
and flickers like grey flame
Decrepitude falls away
flutters like old lace
Her legs lift ponderous like wings
She is leaving but wishing won't make it so
One by one the wings collapse and
fall along guide wires arsenic and lead
Still, she persists her vom'tous slog
near still against the blasted sun
The bird and her describe a whirl against itself
Then whirl against the broken back of world
-- all its armatures corrupt
its chemical sky collapsing into sea
The firmament slides deleriously away
Guide-wires burn and snap like filaments
Legs and wings astride as if willing
only made it so, they are away
But look, a smudge across the rarefied
A listless smile that is a primeval tusk
and two black shines that are
mockeries of eyes
The stillborn beast remains, a stain
and like a slug, consumes the world decay
There is a bright white -- a pelican
astride being of legs and wings
And there is a sallow white that is
universal consumption, a fade
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