There were two of them, both empty.
A ringing continues in the larger bell.
He tells me he can feel it days after the striking.
A storm at the horizon sputters with amber lights.

One world waits for its hunger. Presently, it has no stomach.
If listening is required, you’ll want batteries.
That was, once again, the wrong noise.
It came at an opportune moment for the argument.

Where is the zoo? Near the natural falls?
One alarm was always false, an unimportant one.
Solutions were proposed and tabled, soon perfected unused.
The last attempt succeeded, but in a direction that left them behind.

Always more comfortable among the strange,
prone to jump the garden fence at any startle,
I tossed no flowers upon my father’s grave
as he tossed no flowers upon my mother’s.
From eloquence to secrecy’s sublingual
inconsistencies of faith, I would, like math,
a more exotic womb in which to place
our fathers’ tongues for jaw’s own faults—
that vault wherein we all, gentle as a glass
of thunder in facile rat-skin glory, are born.
Death, that dog best undisturbed, that wonderfully
suffered child, Devastation’s blackened pit bull
enlarged by solvents’ hollow change, will gnaw
upon our moldering names.

White gold, time alone, this bison tips over at the idea of actual wind.

I was awakened early this morning by the scaffolders next door. They were shouting up and down their construction about Mediaeval imagination and the birth of nationhood. I yelled out the window, What’s with the academic bullshit! Get a proper job, like the rest of us. They told me where to go, then began upon the subject of aggression and gender identity.

Still angry, I put on a clown nose, a red fuzzy wig, and left for work.

Driving was hell in my clown shoes, but I managed to crash the car near enough work that I could walk the rest of the way.

I entered the offices, and as I passed those gathered by the coffee machine, a phrase came to mind: The psychology of hell is strewn with coffee tables. Putting this to one side, I went to my office to attend to paperwork.

Eight hours later I went home. The scaffolders were still there, still shouting—discussing the possibility of intelligent life in the universe. I shouted up at them, Impossible, don’t be so stupid!

My argument seemed to win them over, as they conceded—in surprisingly good humour—that it is doubtful.

Savannah rain a careful glove
on the elephant’s ear, an ah or peanut.
Not a peanut, a chrysanthemum,
cavalcade of horses romping
cliff, a considerable moth
covering the porch light. Twilit
elephant wrinkles. Some more
trees, terrible breakfast aroma
late in the day. Yes, some laugh
like the world is smaller than it is.