Cities’ Limits

Faith in death frees the worshipper
from consequence and result. Atheists
dance with rabbits feet and patches,
extending joyful relics ad nauseam.
Monks slobber around china, bumping
against one end of broad daylight
to the other, letting chain reactions
chug at the ends of their lines.
Cradle / grave
Cradle / grave
Cradle / grave
paved in zs,
while revelers avoid cats,
ladders, and mirrors.
Writing the trains every day,
the far out parishioners don’t hide
in suburban homes where
the radio blares
Womb to womb
Doom the tomb
Womb to womb.
From the heart of the city,
Ain’t Saint replies “Bless me less me
because I sin.”

Protocol for a Parable

People lay in a box for burial a science
that doesn’t respond. The practical
questions pronounce and perform rites.

Mystic-eyed folk attempt ear to mouth
resuscitation of the corpus, but facts
overwhelm the myth muscle
and rigor mortis parts bad breath.

Pallbearers tug the tub sloshing
imagination and politics to a hole
where granite grows impatient.

A supernaturalist writes up
a lab report and reads it to survivors
who cannot believe.

The family who can’t go home
goes to work pretending
last year throws light tomorrow.
Wild flowers visit earth around stone
where schoolchildren narrate beginnings.

The reflexes discovered by
curious and desperate populations
produce wiry hypothesis and thumbnail
theory. Though faith in computing
has dragged brutality along with it,

knowledge razzes uneven
parallel bars and obstacle
courses to save the night out for young
and old. Half-measures interrogate
any dancing upon cemetery lawn.