They've Seesawed Enough

Little ones and big ones scan the horizon:
will a favorable wind bring them the plumed caravel
that carries the monkey's bloody skin
carefully suspended on a hanger.

Nudes, like white bones picked clean,
emerge from holes in the air.
The color of our country doesn't agree with them.
They grow thin before your eyes without saying a word
and after being used as a road
they coil up on spools of wind.

An atheist announces that it's two a.m.
He meets fellow atheists
who have lost their epaulettes and their vine leaves
and weep into lead spoons.
They look like comma-openers who have gone off seeking
monstrous red-blue tomatoes
akin to the gibbosities of big apes
and come back empty-handed.

Squares wag their tails.
Finally after thousands of years
they grow forks with human fingers
to catch lice in fires.
Their large hats with gilded warts
quickly tire of seesawing.
Yawning they wait for a blue-fan flight
to take them to more cheerful beaches.

A bit of wind still puffs in the cup.
But the days grown scarcer.
In the gray shadows the black shadows play cup and ball.
The valiant bite their own arms
but they can't find the beginning either.
What else is there to do but munch one knot after another.

The souls of snakes are transparent balls.
Elegant ballevard balls.
They like music
as much as I like the Illustrated Larousse Dictionary.
They play violins on amens like true Paganinis.
They roll along boulevards
playing day and night
brimming over with music
like boiling milk.

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