(TOAD) FUGUE

NEW POEM, AFTER CELAN

europe built an oven in its eye.
yr epiphany is poison.
whose lust, a clumsy hunter.
carried its garrison, here in yr gut.
condemned to sing nostalgic songs.
stinking through the trench of reverie.
flung on the bonfire, an undistinguished hymnal.
call it yr life.
a candle stranded in the loose yellow skirt of its own light.
hunger has formed a crust. has a firm brown crust.
hunger is a slut for hunger.
the bough, perversely burdened with red, inedible fruit.
u hang like a live snake around our neck.
pleasure’s inheritance is grief.
what a time to be alive.
england. is a limed twig with a single leaf.
how torches tickle the fleshy edge of night.
black milk’s emetic swig.
black glue. black solvent huff.
even wrath is remnant.
black obliterating fugue.
it is not black. the ordnance of yr island story.
yr lowly and partitioned art.
old england’s roast beef.
the circular typography of suffering.
is an oath sworn on roundels of beige meat.
whose heart, zipped up inside the curious briefcase of yr bluster.
is ticking.
is ticking between legibility and lyric.
pastured force.
language, bent towards intercept.
america is a door, spinning on a single hinge.
self-satisfied flag flown from the wall of a broken house.
now we are all running, parallel to hazard.
now we drink it: cryptmilk. black titmilk of aftermath.
cynic’s pissmilk.
yr milk, uncle-suckler.
evangelist of of ovens.
a song inside these ending days. the morgue of form.
language. languish. anguish. said the poet. english.
has no commandments, only commands.
we swill it at evening.
the bloody gum connecting to the rusty faucet.
yr blue-grey hands to strangle us, tearing the paper, stretching the bread.