parables from prison bathrooms and presents under terms

When bathroom breaks disrupt productivity
we all know the coal is paying for itself
Cat Power scorching the middle desk
like a decking hall-bell postponed for windy hearts

Age against the growing posture,
the old and the young, equally traced out of mard legion
growing faces disturbed by ventricle wings
stammering out the passion of the flys and the ads

Here to feed the painted basslets and the masked iron
like grace-plants wounded by time exposure
downsides like years of stalled justice
when getting borrowed between one person and another

Tied documenting the fasting-house journey
that does concede the eloquent forgetful trails
bombing the eastern shore like ants on the freeway,
here we have arrived, without the papers of Zaragoza

The work of memory to distill the nightly masked men
casting penetrating health for forfeiting,
words that lead the entrails of the donkeys of parables,
the west on the cusp of riotous saboes

Derek Walcott imparting the blues
on Blind Lemon Jefferson’s un-mowed lawn and pearl door
stuffing out the last of the amber of the fire of heaven
where prescription cohesion masked sobs sorted

Weather like restroom breaks on the highway
with starship skies tearing out the $100 windows
a light in a small place, with eaglets and Louis Pasteur
the morning ceiling, with shift-felt-regret petrol

firefighters doing carpentry work,
saving babies and being taken to task,
for ceiling bags of coins
nectar where the bruised knees enforce conflicting terms,
and the prison camps pray to God’s stolen entry