At The Red Throat

In youth, Death was         a puny boy possessing but         wormy hands & fleshless fingers         as in Witch Hazel         or Scrooge's Future Ghost          - that insipid Evil One         Hansel so easily outwitted         in a gingerbread house.         Time brought increased notoriety.         Saucy times with a soupon of respect         for the artful dodger.         Givens change, an armful of         orange lilies, limp & loathsome,         on a tombstone door         before trumpets of rain.         Graven images. Lifeless stone.         Death became stone.         Stone empty. The maggot emptiness         burrowing into chiselled easel and         the stone-cutter's savage magic.         Just a bitty stone         to herald a passing.         Night-jars.         Old straw-chairs with         a broom pronouncing         the wall base with its touch empty,         the empress of bandages         leaning to rags         On table scraps,         sorry gloom of an old building         by a pickled lake         leaking into ebb twilight.         The coronation of the nightmare,         the moon with her billowing robes and withered spoon         unfolding midstream ...         la cauchemar ou         dnude soire         to discover, with wonder, ices with sherbet         reek like nightsweats;         a windsail of pooled light         thru puddles of trees.         Brackish backwater -         thoughts of black ice         and huddled masses of silver         breaking thru the sun's         winter curtain as erupting coins.