Ghosts and Angels

The night is full of vast
and unimaginable dimensions
and despairs, darker than even the night, itself,
can be in those places where the sun truly
never shines, and even the most sorrowful ghosts
and undauntable angels tend to avoid, and even
the wind with its rather unfair reputation for
mindless meandering and having no natural sense 
of direction, still will not go.

Light Holds the Dead in Beauty

before nightfall, to stop them a moment
at the crossroads, before getting on the bus
to the afterlife, where, they say the rhumba
is back in fashion, tame dogs and wild geese
wonder freely about the streets, and the 
seraphim play and splash about in the
fountains, laughing with joy as we watch
the last light of day ascend slowly on wings.

man behind the man behind the man

eloquent machine of glass and moonlight,
machine of fantasy manufacture, machine
of soothsaying and smoke, many cylindered
machine of sea and sky, machine made from
bones of galloping horses, machine that captures
mendacity and ill-will, rain-making, light-
filtering machine with which to look for
objects lost under the surface of appearances
and intentions, deus ex machina within the 
machine within a machine within a machine 
within a machine beneath the flesh of the man
behind the man behind the man behind the man,
ad infinitum, amen, hallelujah, praise be!