MS. FIRESTONE

Dreams do not make melody career
you see your cartoon breakfast in the dawn sky
through an android window
and cannot reach over the hill rise.

The noise of satin uniform
falling on the floor of a trashcan
alerts genius to the presence of murder, in the self,
on the apartment precipice, forcing music
into fire escape and wires
the aridity of loneliness accepted
an orchestra of nerves that have
no homes in other nerves.

To abandon abandonment, the arctic heart,
spreading tendrils of frost across the skeleton leaves
of human cities, to open a mystic dresser drawer, to
see a metropolis of burning numbers, in which one
is a letter transfigured.

A crucifix older than history
nudges its indecipherable plaque
against the underside of the lounge rug
and strains against it until the floor becomes
a wave of tumblers, children prepared to play,
who'd not begun.