after Cocteau

A smoke stack crumbles.
A line sketch speaks.

The poet is a grid of wires
kissing the mouth on his palm.
He turns beauty into a marble stone
and throws it through a window
onto a stack of young bones.

Gamblers carry on
over the bodies of children
until the last card is dealt.

The poet smashes the stone
with a heavy mallet
until he himself is stone.

He cracks and falls apart
like snow mounds in the sun,
sinking into the earth.