spiegel im spiegel 

tete a tete, what
fabulous phrases
fretfully scraped in sweat—
 
to summon some bumbling echo,
what ambered bone you’d rug-
beat rugby-rough from strictly
 
tallow and talcum and corn
syrup seized around some
drowned daoist alchemist’s shadow—
 
thrawn psalm of the bumblebee snoring on
sunflowers slipping toward rip-
tide moon rise writhing bright
 
as a flickering stoplight, colors
that only contusing moods 
must choose as
 
snake eyes settle, as
sidewalks steer, as
trees 
           burst clean through a
               blistering trail head,
                                    nail beds bitten to
 
bitterness, bliss, or the labyrinth 
velvet hem of eternity’s curtains
scrunched or scowling in
 
shrouds of old robespierre, gigi,
some shrill stitch in the sun
king’s dream kicked proud of the 
filigreed seam or the treacly
 
seemlessness of bees 
slumped snuggled up under the
sun-picked petals of pendulous 
sunflowers summoning dragged 
 
or drugged or undulous echoes in
bees and these summer-buffed 
farrows of goldfinches—                         dreams
 
draw twill to a twiddling houndstooth
sea of unspeakably resonant forks and
keys dug deeper in cork than the most of us
 
drum our tone-soaked tongues among harrowing
breastbones, brainplates, irises e-
lated in tracing the names of our
 
favorite sunbeams, fluttering
clumsy as drunken june bugs
spooling what withering wake about
molten moieties mewling clover makes among
 
cabbage patched scraps of extracted
grass blades sneezed across curdling curbs—
though nary the once had the
moon disturbed our star
 
or the birr of the bee bled farther than 
whale song crooned through the storied
bassoon that’d riled up riots in rag-
tag Paris