why is the sky so silent;
clouds hang around like
junkies. the sun,
floating
mountebank,
hides
slyly, and is
as clever as he
looks. on a black branch
sits a crow, its ragged feathers an
insult to
decorum. he pretends to
preen, but gets on with his real business,
the old amoral spy.
we won’t find meaning
here, in this devil’s back-
yard.

one of the higher
branches lifts its bony
fingers in benediction or a
curse,
mockery of this already
burlesque
world, while a face,
a grotesque travesty,
alarms with its sickly
grin
within the wrinkles of the
bark.
hanging from the topmost
branch
is a rope, its end twisted into a
noose. through that deathly loop we
see a ship
of ancient wood,
its sails torn and raggy.

a sound, sacrilegious and malodorous,
insinuates cold and creeping
dread, a dirge for the darkness.
thin blood-like
sap
oozes from the eye-
sockets of the face:
tears from the deep tap-
roots of the world’s
suffering. they draw us in, you and
I, until we are
overcome.
across the way
there sprawls a building, its many
windows chimaeras of lost
hope,
a forlorn white face staring from each
one; and they are
legion.
before unnoticed, we behold a strange fruit
hanging from the twisted limbs:
bodies of babes wrinkled like dried
leather,
all whispering of
death.

through the wood hurries
noisily
a hunchback, carrying
all the ills of the world in his
hump, a clock where his face should be. “The key!” he shouts,
“Who has the key?” but he is soon
gone…