POEM

Please move the sunlight to the front of 
                                                                 the fading beauty queen—

what is Old Age
                                                           =      heartbeats-over-heartbeats. 

To survive 
is to interpret gaseous vulgarity as what it is not 
with a breast plate of righteousness 
that is like neurosis-force 
as if the characters on the pages of a play that you are reading 
                 stepped out of the play & spoke to you face-to-face: 

pyramid of life containing a cone of visual divinity, 
an allegorical cathedral—

                                                            I watched as my grandmother 

tried to place flowers upon a gravestone 
inside of an image of a stained-glass window—
                                                            the archaic colors reflecting onto her craggy 
face, a heavenly banquet, 
shadows fitting between light & object: 

the body figuration of one’s whole terrestrial mass & 

                                                           l
the mind/mind               s                    p                 i                         t 

 s                                                 p                  lit

                                                                      i
                                      s                    p                  r            i           t

out        of        focus 
                                    
to touch the sonic, roaring phantom ahead of us— 

nothing but traces in the shape of Lions.