POEM

We’re all wearing scarlet letters upon our breasts
as intense as the counterpoise, the burn of watered-down
joy to punish thoughts by acting on their distinctions.

Out of the Maelstrom, I put a rope around the wind
as I ride upon the Euroclydon like an idea on an eyelid.
The rain pours like a woman’s fountain, flood, frond. 

And because I’m a Cyclops with Second Sight, and 
because the slowly sinking sun is slipping into my skull
through an invisible tube made of wormhole residue,

each day seems to have been poured out of some cauldron 
of molten metals from the sky; the unrelenting visuals,
congealed and in longing, are mere abstract patinas 

while we “made do” and wasps bounce upon the air like 
invisible properties, and a calico cat standing on a 
speed bump stares at me, or through me, while my spirit, 

like an eagle, glides above some horizon like the Yukon, 
the way that my body disappears from the bed when sleeping: 
a kind of Possible Elsewhere, a Periodic Table of Dubious 

Apprehensions. I am the Majestic Plural of the Hypocatastasis 
still frolicking in your ancient daydream’s garden 
with Spring’s regalia choking me through this revelation; 

the daffodils are sipping my coffee in exchange for visual 
photosynthesis. My body is groaning for resurrection. 
I’m eating the flaming torch that stings sweetly

flapping in my brain like the shape of my tongue wrung out.