Unpaginated

    Orchestrating violins thru whisky sky
    clouds slide like billiard balls
    a Jackie Gleason-Fats Domino
    ricochet off greener velvet;
    my pheasant escaping snow.

    Jack Ketch the hangman
    in brilliant plumage,
    a touch of Borgia in
    long, murderous hands.

    The light of Capone in
    steeple-dark eyes
    running like a
    haunted ship
    around the white, facial disc.

    Offset. Bold type.
    I see you through pages
    of my history book
    only you're unpaginated.

    Unclench the fist,
    watch for effervescent islets,
    erotic mounds of Venus or
    protuberances called Marquesas
    off my left hand.

    Omens are the cloth
    of dreams, scissors
    used to open sky.

    Work out cosmic debts -
    figure stone footprints on Hollywood Blvd.
    en route to Tijuana for a start;
    I should have been Buddha incarnate
    or curator at the Hermitage,
    wild shaman for the Arapaho
    not a cocoa butter salesman
    from New Jersey, nagging
    soda-jerk in L.A.
    'bout the time
    of Marilyn Monroe's
    quick magic.

    The Almighty unpacking orange crates,
    sending Florida cold
    unravelling karmic debt,
    brass studs in your eye
    mowing suckers with your scythe;
    Birthpath urge, Father Time,
    de-gutting chickens at Pleasure Farms
    looking to Hindoos for clues
    (placing roaches on a lucky few.)

    This hurdle over stones
    crass fortitude ensemble,
    strange melange
    spewing nails,
    elbows round thin pain
    gutter cathedral looming into view
    where there
    is more viscera than mirth before
    ripples of enchantment
    cause vibrations at four
    and the phrenology
    of universal measure
    is a moon
    ribcage in light
    - gazelle of trees
    a dinosaur in height.