astrology

woke up: the sun is crying
the moon has left me
lambent tears run rivers
'round the eye-searing

puzzle pastels drift in&out
of place as the drunken spectrum
marches upwards (Phaetonic photons?)
but that's my problem, she says

always staring at the sky
as if cirrus tea leaves told
the story of our day—I'm
down here on solid ground

yet, the Muse has not spread
herself so thinly as to not
cover sky and that which
hides from the burning eye

in the back of the refrigerator
when the light goes off
the half-finished tub of hummus
is still whispering of you

The End of the World

Quite unexpectedly, as Vasserot

The armless ambidextran was lighting

A match between his great and second toe,

And Ralph the lion was engaged in biting

The neck of Madame Sossman while the drum

Pointed, and Teeny was about to cough

In waltz-time swinging Jocko by the thumb

Quite unexpectedly the top blew off:

And there, there overhead, there, there hung over

Those thousands of white faces, those dazed eyes,

There in the starless dark, the poise, the hover,

There with vast wings across the cancelled skies,

There in the sudden blackness the black pall

Of nothing, nothing, nothing—nothing at all.

a poem by

Archibald MacLeish