Entropy Triptych
—A scythe that bends to plaited hair
means nothing: but look, child,
to the fork-haired chin, the wide
neck, shell-white and sheen,
open as a cloud-shorn noon:
one palm holds all the air
but for the man whose hourglass song
whistles the bones to flutes,
tells how some father stood
with staff on a wind-whipped roof,
the tower from where one word
fell: a saliva droplet, a petal—
—First the pill and now
the doubling: a look wrenched
wide as a howl, tongues
the cerebellum, rasp breath
belling like a slit bulb: this light
that licks the knob skull spikes
the larynx, with its shadow
widens the mouth, leaks
and ribbons the screen:
one worm to rim hemispheres:
this hat of skin bleached black,
the word snake-forked, a sight
only the image sees: O soul
that quit some burlap lung,
how warps the mirror
when the face turns other—
—Ruddy sun, ashen
ground, this blot beams
like a vein-webbed eye:
scathed bone, marrow-hollowed:
the black throat cries,
grizzled around the lips,
a ball of grass thrown
into the palm of a fire:
spears sparked and spry
darken, the shadow of which
is a boy’s navel: birth-light,
burst from black, boils red:
the sun’s breath skims the water-face
and the looker spins some fable—