Today

Dead harlequins making wooden Indians
smile. Fortunes found in the architecture of
smoke. I shutter the windows to think. The
climate is such a tease. The colonization of a
long silence, captions and epithets, like
poodles escorted down a sidewalk losing sight
of the road. The shadowy dance of gnomes, in
a forest of concrete once rich with the howl of
wolves. Something out of the side of Shirley
Temple's mouth. Pointless fingers, making
amends a joke between the pianists. The
cavalry might as well have come spitting rose
petals. Sequestering butterflies, for their
testimony at a splash of color. An amalgam,
disintegrating into Mozart, doing pushups in
the right way to quiet. Pushing statues out
into traffic. The hand on the shoulder of the
man with his hand in the air.