A casing, so plastic;
Shined up to kill.
Repeated, they pump:
Actioned, through will.

In glass, tulips wilt
In the sun on the sill,
Browning in water;
Pronounced, there until.

Madness: a viola’s trill.
Combined, caustic will.
Unlearning, the book-less;
Screamed now, so shrill.

Unsigned and flapping;
A lifeline, a bill.
A flag-waving patriot:
You know the drill.

Pull up socks where the wet and mud
collide and make clay that holds firm.

The walls insulate each hurried pulse
beside a blood-red thermos that sweats.

Leather and cloth hang on loose scenery;
decorated rock and groaning branch.

The earth is an iced cake and it has plates
and faults and grumbling, hot secrets:

if you are silent, you can hear them
‘neath the clack of a plastic eye or the

fizz of a reel that has no end. In hot light,
whiskers hold sway and we live or die.

Frozen in gold and buried with each
shining moment, we will storm forever.

below the line
where it hurts
in print
and in hertz

little bursts
of ill

a withered
bill that pecks
where the words
bubble and
meaning tumbles
to a floor

shaved from
stakes
that now
resemble weaponry

a coda to
something grown
and nourished

a redux to
arms called
and blown
away