a ghazal for wide red elision/elysium

lugeto veneres cupidinesque—Catullus
as in a tabula raga/rasa that off with
the fairies drifted through much fog—No One
Molon Labe—Terse Laconics in Hypotaxis

a curious liberation in this announcement
of the Platonic footing all the night
I felt in her that fairies had taken me
I strapped my new feet and thought of fire
eating up the houses all around
their faces pressed against windows
but in this I am not predatory
and would abandon a chase if a slow gazelle
turned with haha heaving breast to demand there be a rest
but still, still
the fire creeps down the houses
and who could believe
in that little box
that no one of us had thought in the fire's steep
and thought still in our sleep
of how it might be
if the gazelle the ghazal had been quickened
in all of its rhymes in its hindquarter chimes
till the breath that flew there
the claws that there grew

fastened all through her hair
in the rain-steeps I am learning
to be mellif as all Eve
always to believe
in the last-lying heave

.