A California of snow and the surprise
Of illness. I throned myself in the white
Noise of its silence and watched as the world

Photographs of photographs and Polaroids
of stacks of books on fragments
and photographs and pamphlets
on letters sent and imminent
collisions. What the body does not know
it wants. And the mind.

In the Next Life in an absinthe slip
Of ribbons, water-silk coat, glass seeds
Like water at the throat, I’ll be adored

The skeleton clicks, endlessly doubling
over in my hands. Damned things that steal soul
and flee. Mine, the son of a virgin father

Pink moon jelly, brown-bulbed weed,
and the serial, busted-up lines of nudged lather:
hissing, provisional lace, so white

Sunlight sang through the chick door's crack.
   And I heard her words,
         yet chose not to wake my brother,

For hours now the Last Supper has been over.
And the beating almost over, and morning’s cry
Yet to be heard by the workmen in the courtyard

Your fabled self, lying there error prone.

Once it seemed possible, those boys
Peeking out of gun slits at the German line
Or on graves detail, wet, miserable,

And blow, blow dust off an enfeebled spine,
Filling lungs with belletristic grime.