Landscapes

Babelonia

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Madames, Messieurs, please come closer.
Hear the hammers, drums and thunder.

He rattles off the mirabilia-arrangements to build
the tower -- reptiles drop their skin with no mutation.
The bearded woman sinks her face into a crocodile's tooth-gates
and taste his swampy tears. Ja, wunderbar.

He points the dancer with glittered thighs
standing on a man's back: rounded hips and nipples
pinned by rings. Near them, a woman makes tattooed
dragon tongues belly-dance and kiss at the navel. Mais oui.

Don't feed your loins. He groans the tower will reach to heaven
if we keep our bellies on sawdust level, tamed. Da. Da.
He jolts and shouts above the trumpeting
of elephants that shit and stomp on the foundations.

The art of building has made progress. He yells to look
at the walker on wire, a double cheese burger between teeth,
pockets full of candy-greens for the contortionist blowing
fire from his ass. Esta bien. Esta bien. He tears off his clothes,

twists on the ground, slobbers, raises the tower's coat of arms
with the effigy of closed fists.

Possessions

He has come to watch the place,
to case the joint and make assessment
of what is worth keeping.
There isn't much, and it was not insured.

He takes off his coat, sits cross-legged,
puffs on his pipe while we draw an inventory --
a porcelain dog frightened by its own violent,
jade eyes; a stone judge with a rope around the neck;

wild magnolia trees, an orchard filled with almond
scent and silver spiders. He chuckles and puffs, then
tells us to leave everything but the house
that opens its poetry book and reads itself aloud
in the sunset's clutter.