After Salvador Dali.

Slip on the gutter night shawl, 

below Mayan underworld streets 

and blood-soaked battlefields, 

death curio cabinets decked in relief angels 

painted velvet and sandstone, 

sun-bleached wood frames, holy burning giraffes, 

solitary in agoraphobic confinement.

Botticelli’s maidens bathe in chemical basins, 

cat mask children lust bare breasted busts 

above shadow pulpits of infinite downward depths, 

our history aflame, sparked by immolated insolence, 

burns through dry plains grass, 

cutting locomotive streets into dirt, 

peace white cities kiss the dawn horizon 

and blue skies, literal protests of Yaxchilán stonework 

jutting from dense forests. 

Indian headhunters wield brass instruments, 

those sweet Alcatraz blues, the notes drift 

groundward in see-saw waves, 

nuclear butterfly wings, the slightest gravity pull, 

weakened moon glow denied human sacrifice, 

heart, worm-hole riddled, Vietnamese trench 

warfare, Pegasus sprung from her split skull 

bone fragments, the confetti, a wet, slick birth, 

old soul coma hidden behind charades. 

Dig up the father’s ashes to make whole my buried regrets, 

let fall the memory of you into grave soil, 

lying prone on concrete steps, 

coyote yips, a hereditary wolf pack howl 

in this world of old skeletons.