Earl of Basement

His belly is a footstool for a serpent.  His arms drool.
When did he come into village history, gaping like a loon camera?
With windpipes strapped in razors, all whistles stopped,
all bells stilled, to descend to a lower pealing

A small ship of friends is cruising into the fire's outline,
tinsel windows from a few yards of forest, the roadside winking,
the welling up and dying out of a consciousness, a teaching
through the eyes, a smudge of light-smeared
human photograph, tearing from the fabric of natural light

He's the driver in a thicket of reflection.
The liquid painted on dry bone that will flake off against the sunrise.
And he is resonant to the machine of the earth.