The City of Stairs

First a hill was here beneath fast

Eyes that draped cold, tread-worn granite

Over it in terraced, timeless

Paths. Uncarved with windows, doors or

Railings, flight and terrace, epoxy-

Saturated, give no springy

Quarter, entertaining ascent,

Descent, interval of rest with

Altar hospitality to

Help our feet forget how not to

Move. The naked stars impover-

ished as wandering and barren

Asherah priestesses rub our

Eyes like sanding-paper on the

Fingernails. But we distrust the

One enormous star that sometimes

Shouts azure and moldy white from

Close within the chasm of the

Sky. Self-speaking and star-worried

Over granite cold we pass up

Through the City of Stairs where the

Architects now climb no more but

Watch diminishing returns of

Surprise across our faces flee

At each successive, hidden flight.

Topsoil

A few nights ago

On my street

A guy concluded his

Life in a dry cleaning van,

Holding someone’s

Bullet behind his face.

Meanwhile, in the ground,

Moles overwhelmed eat

Desperately

Through the growing dirt.

We’re losing topsoil

But not in the city. Dirt

In the city grows

When the street-sweepers park

And the senate finds

Home in fossils.

Maybe already they’ve put him

Into the ground, under the dirt

That grows.

Matter cannot be created nor

Destroyed,

And the dirt is growing.

The dirt must grow from somewhere.

It swells up to encase cities,

Uruk, Hazor,

Nashville that was,

Out and higher,

Dissipating the stratosphere,

Out and frosty,

Into the void beyond Pluto,

Until dirt that was follicle,

Dirt that was smile and grimace

Tumors spinningly

Out to the empty pupil of the Milky Way.

We’re covering our tracks.

November

Those red trees watch you
Drifting towards the abyss
Clouds of heart