I love the smell of burning plastic in the morning.

The ridge glints with gold, it is not imaginary.

Beauties conceal themselves

in the fortress cliff face,

it goes deeper.

Caves lick at the earth with molten mouths

swallowing histories and armor

mystery strengthened by the horror of time.

My story lost in the overlapping

entanglements of man,

under a million distorted tales.

And for the beauty

for the chiming harmony

of all these discordant things

an eel nestled in an inkpot

webs of light bursting

from an old tobacco urn

the wineglass tipped empty

on a brick hearth

with no lips or fire left

metal rainbows from a bone cage

shelves of magnetic mercury

soul's layers lingering in place

yet wavering at the call

of a deeper fall.