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Ger Killeen

Brumaire

The storm discovers

its voice, and the meanings

multiply gust by gust.

It all becomes

a city of one dream. Think

of sleep as a fire

whose blown white heat

brings out layer

after smudged layer

of sentences

quilled in citron inks,

book chapters, perhaps.

The lucky salvage

fistfuls of smoke, pen

them away inside

the orbital cavities

sunk in lovely skulls. So many

eyes the color of parchment

perching like pigeons

on spires, on ramparts,

so many chilling nights

of hilarious weeping.

Nivôse

To one a smoldering

coal, to the other

a mouthful of ash,

each and every one its own

hunger: pressure

enough to hold

the swell and hum,

the clatter tumbling over

the royal roads a night

or part of a night.

Otherwise

only rehearsed sayings

bunched up under

the teeth, fitful

squeaking as of

pipistrelles under eaves

steeply pitched against

the weight of articulacy

that is the sad

measure of days.

To one

a few true things,

to the other

a few more.

Otherwise

tragedy

and farce

and tragedy.

Without end.

Calendar

Now it is one era; now

it is another. The sky

burns purple, unpronounceable;

the hours are a bristling

looped into your nerves.

And so, the rock-doves plunge and swoop

as your eyes strain to parse

their scattering into

verbs inflected for the future;

a hand like amber smoke casts

yarrow sticks, bundles them

promisingly; and so many silvery cities

trilling in the solar winds.

Soon there is the oceanic clatter

of a talus slide;

soon there is the fluent stutter of guns.

____

Copyright ©2006 by Ger Killeen