Sunday Morning

The bell-pull tolled
Hailing the arrival of the great marble eye,
Its glassy lid splitting like glacier melts
Gaping, slack-jawed,

Through the scabbed membrane of clouds
Wherein the sun’s rays grew to dull bladed thrushes;
Her marrow licked clean by greedy tongues
Whose lofty decorum lay tarnished
Upon slovenly-glazed teeth

Caked with the stench of sorrow
Or cigarette smoke,
Their canines chipped by the regret
Of a thousand tin soldiers,

Metallic bodies strung up as if by clothespins
Upon the cusps of ashen campaniles,
Where rain spilled over the bronzed bell jars
As if to mimic the malignant disposition
Of distant sea foam,
Tinged with sulfuric insanity.

The clapper wavered in its slow discontent,
Gravely commodious,
Whistling with each peal its untimely stalemate
Maggot queen, stick your pin

Pin stuck, sheet tight,
The eye shrivels and weeps;
Its lids greying with each tenuous cry.

The old pearl gleams through the thrushes,
Cascading through the soured gorse
That wavered upon Lucifer’s slated throne,
Glaring at the raw impasse of sod
That lay, dust-filmed and velveteen,
Poor sickly pale finger!

Soot-coated chimney sweep
Out for his daily deliverance
His broom, indifferent, laying prostrate
Atop his wormy king’s ottoman
Bog-heavy with worry, worry, worry.