I use to gawk 

at the sycamore stocks
as though they were more
than gods, though now,
 
the world pared down into
souring flour, the sun
shafts just too sharp 
to suckle—though, see
 
how a matchstick scratches
a shadow for something, sulfurous 
tangrams tired of twiddling 
thumbs to unplumbable 
                                        numbness,
some smug cinder snuffling still. How 
the puzzlebox onion’s core’s afforded
a flame’s shape, only
should one but
cut it and
cry a bit. Awe
 
contorted to fear though 
clearly as somebody bending 
a bustling skull back into a scab-
black lobster’s bratticing 
                               asshole,
bratticing what twixt
spirit and bark and
conduit twisting as
snakeskin sharpens—dust
 
of what darned stiff 
as a firescreen flickering 
here in a sun beam, bracing
or tracing or beating as
 
bones beat raw, as the
timpani’s tenterhook sides sag
softer and softer to tones so 
low they’re mistaken for throttling
 
cat’s paws clawing up tenterhook 
bean stalks, over which all my a-
ccordioned onion-skin and pin-
stoked sentiments splutter, so 
woefully, wonderfully wind-struck