The Smoky Rose of Dawn Above

The smoky rose of dawn above

            the second city of absence,

                                                quiet streets

                                                ERROR 404

                        in the shunned time,

the unseen

            visible in the lonely train—

builders, cleaners, only Jesus

            & McDonalds prowl the swirling eddies

of bright cold trash—WE ARE HAPPY TO SERVE

            YOU in the pantomime of Athenian

                        democracy flattened amongst the parade

            of impossible placard women

who inhabit someone’s fabricated

            evening, who balk at this

            the hour of the misplaced—sheenless

                        among shitty diapers & Styrofoam peanuts.

                        What even the champion somnambulist

            will wake to—

                        work, age, the quotidian

            a bleeding limb inside the haute

knockoff jumper—trash collectors scouring

the curbs in search of some kind of relief,

            the answer is there

                        between metal teeth,

buried or flushed out to sea,

            clogging the world with its urgency.