There is a devil buried 

Deep in each man & I have

 

Named mine Happy Fun

Go Go. It looks at me,

 

Just stares & a knitting

Buzz maps my skin.

 

Always, without speaking

To me a single slashing

 

Word, I know what I must

Do—Top hat, shower of botflies,

 

Serve the pale pink beef & fail

To understand the rules—only

 

Hear the calligraphy of leaches

Oilspilling his eyes. Between

Orders, I gum vulture bones

Until they crack, split wide

 

Like beseeching hands. The spongy

Prize of marrow. Buttery sweet

 

Blood. I taste as much as I can

In this kingdom of dead pets 

 

In the park’s tall grass, their raggy

Wrappings chamberworked,

 

Hived, homed, by mason

Bees. I savor each wondrous
 

Sting, each splinter. Pumpkin ash,

Catalpa—the elephant heart

 

Plums like hundreds of dark

Fists—limbs bowing dirtward.

 

Here, the credo is a coffin-deep

Mouth. A guttery song that quarrels

 

Up from the buckling, potholed

Street. For the sugar drippings,

 

The once upon a time, I wring

Fragility from day’s last light.

 

Inside me: it’s no good anymore.

Inside me: that been & gone, bog-

Clutched breath that choked me

Each time I popped the slick 

 

Dentures from grandma’s stroke-

Still maw. To keep it between

 

The moon, the version of me

Bottomed out in my deep & this me

 

Right here, each midnight I take 

The blasting radio up on

 

The roof. After sinking into

The bodyheat of the shingles,

 

I press into me the hi-fi

Plastic & dials Clutch it, until

 

My hollows lace electric—hum

The endless murmur of strangers

 

& suddenly I am holding within

Me everything of the world:

 

Sun-bleached lawn flamingos,

A summer’s worth of peach pits

 

Rattling in a jam jar. But before

I know it, a purple line crazes

 

The horizon—slowly up painting

The boulevard into the day’s full

 

Wallop. The budding magnolias

Go blue & orange & fever-

 

White & then a day arrives with

Choked gasping, a fade to black.

 

Gloved hands that flourish

 

Like a magician’s, fold back a white

 

Sheet precisely to the bloodless

Inch of skin below my Adam’s apple,

 

The grub-like pallor that I will glow

With after the black box in my guts

 

Finally says it’s time to kneel,

Wrangle a whipping shoelace in 

 

The careening path of a garbage

Truck, the instant the metronomic

 

Ticking of the bomb in me stills. 

The silence loiters, leadens until

 

Sudden howls shatter me forever

Into sleep. Already, I can feel

 

That rabid heat coming. A riot

Of mayflies in the streetlight’s

 

Salmon haze. All of that will

Show in its own good time.

 

The wind gusts tiny thuds

From the rustdown screen

 

Door. Each second that wells

Around me I am climbing out

 

Of a bed after a long & terrible

Illness, I am leaning in to kiss

 

A car wreck, the monster. In me,

It croons—a throating half-

 

Way between pain & beautiful

Song. All of it is unbearable

 

But this always is overtime.

A chain of paper swans coils

 

Out for miles, up the rivering

Scree of the mountain & into

 

The invisible distance. I refuse

To stop wanting more joy

 

Than I have been allotted. I will make

Brilliant even a fleabite of blood.