turn of the millenium: sky breaks
husk of day, cicadas chant
one love song before sleep, good lord
says i’m playing for you
because he doesn’t know how to go down on his knees
& scarabs bleed green so as not to lose their way in his hands. breath
catches on i, unholy
word not yet wrought in pain yet not uninherited. organs
swell in the ocean, crack up on the rocks into a choir of feathers,
good for nothing angels in apogee,
clouds chlorinated toxic enough for drink, the good lord stomps in yellow
galoshes because no one is looking
(he knew he should have had
a throne but the thought of sitting on someone’s
shoulders made him want to
cry). he tried kissing his own creation like it was a
mother because he never even had a mother,
but it was like looking back into your eyeball
or licking the tip of your elbow
with no one to tell the time
in the summer before before, before
after, before stay.