Phlegethon

Round rafts drift, onyx.
From above, sunspots.

Passengers on each
cloaked in fuligin.

Invisible, ghosts.
Though they stomp their feet

the craft do not rock.
How they bleat in pain --

the heat.  The raspy
voice of a choir boy

extinguished too soon
inks in wisps:  grace notes

fluttering above
red rippled magma.

Interminable
when one considers

__________the Styx.

Echo and Narcissus

She shrank to a fragment
of what I had said.
My sweet turtledove:
I struck her meat
from out her shell,
I spoke in her head.
In retaliation
she gave me hell.
I am a corpse for years
crying tears that run
into a cobblestone well
from which Jack and Jill,
toothless and grim, draw
as they hum Dixieland jazz
to themselves.  A voice
inspected me to death.
It found the hole in my head
we've looked through since '09.
She threaded a clothesline
through it and wheeled me
out to the middle of the alley
where I dry under a farther sun.
I twist in the wind.
I dream I speak to her
through the empty can
at my end of the string.
When the real telephone
really rings, the voice
who answers will sing
God's word in a golem's mouth.
Hear the crowd shout!
It's the amazing Mr. Inside-Out!
See how he doubts
this reality where everyone
is smarter than he.

Scoundrel In Paradise (Confessional)

Butchers with angels' voices
__________close in.
Response:  assume a form
_____no one
in this world wants.
__________False piety,
contrition, never uttered
by Becky Sharp in the beer hall.
Congenitally incapable of seizing
opportunity, my tears
complain that I am loved too well.
A perfect fit, the way ravens
cawing yonder circle
for years 'til they dive
towards my meat.
Dissipation,
___________les fleurs du mal,
aren't aromatic to me.
I was born to be crushed
_____trunk to feet.
Not an herb underneath you
but a salted root.