White as twelve ivories
White as the moon’s eye
White as the dying
White as runic lightning
White as Papal garb
White as paper sheaf
White as a chasuble
White as delight, charity, merrity, rare nobility
White as albumen
White as Algernon
White as studs along Orion’s belt
White as the skin around your welts
White as blizzard stuff
White as buzzard fluff
White as blind eye
White as kind lie
White as night’s demise
White as bride’s chemise
White as a Templar’s alb
White as a skinshorn scalp
White as lab mice
White as boiled rice
White as phosphorus
White as the rushing Bosporus
White as a face drained by fright
White at takeoff those feared of flight
White pearly as gelignite
White frost on gelid night
White as surrendering
White as blank rendering
White as Charlemagne’s asbestos cloak
White as a tensed up hand a-choke
White as tenor Barry’s surname
White as prospective eternity
White as Proserpina’s foot
White as my-side-goes-first’s rook
White like Matey suds and bubbles
White like Solomon Northup’s troubles.
Pale as pail’s content and heated to constant
When you think you cannot stand more, apply twice requisite heat
Until your circle-shod flask glowers back, unglowing black as peat
Unloving father eats his son eats his father
Chewing half-made bread, genuflecting before the altar
In my last vial, the rest either cracked or defiled by reviled potables
Strange parthenogenesis takes place, the spermless egg multiplicates
Might be half-mad, words first confined to clay by the belt-length bearded priests of Akkad I whisper above my formulad
Half made things evenings of Genesis, before which reason falters
I am here seeking favour, in all but potato satchel I feel like Walter
Raleigh, months at sea now returned, my Lizzie, to no fanfare
I bring back less everytime I go out on the water;
Some fisher of mens’ souls
Unable even to find shoals
Every cave, every hole I stole down, cold and god-told
Until I found the sleeping tripledog, the skull knaves, marking Sheol.
My leather sandals destroyed with traversing, adversity everywhere
No sign of cities down here, the sand stains my shoes bistre brown
Sky black as a granddad’s ashtray, the ash trees here drop tabash blossoms
There is always a bigger fish, the fang-gored Griffin flesh second to the Tarasque.
In the church I feel different every time
Sometimes as a child to be punished
Sometimes to inter the perished
I have read the hymns, squeezed the old psalter for dear life as night bore down on me
Ornamenting my instincts with words, something pushes me to climb
Keep climbing.
When the sun shines, though that is rare
Through yon stained glass window
It is observed to gild the very air
Even shed cells of dead skin that float like unmanned magic carpets this beauty share
Thrumming and vibrant, the sun approves kaleidoscopic martyrdoms
Its colours fly like unwarned Icarus, the martyrs shoed by cauldrons their faces dignified
Penetrating beams like steels past shields scan in lemniscate patterns, seeming to select
And highlight any Elect present, who come Doomsday delect
Upon the body of dead Leviathan
Light parting the shade, like an infection of luminescence upon the ridge of regal midnight
Some day, only the dimmest traces of light will reach our world due to senescence
And general entropic tendencies
Glory highlights its imperfections
Where streaked panes are flecked with dirt
We of souls reminded, of good works made alert
Glory ignites the reflections
What in glory senses glory in you
What with lowered head you whispered of truth
What halcyon inkling rouses infirmity’s bold youth
Where the serpent commences let my arrow fall strong
Where the braver man tenses, folds, let me tarry long.
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