“Gifts of Essence”
I’ll swear by the jacket of your destitute
of hairs and flies and paramours
when long hairs stick to a murderer’s
white cotton cape, brief top hat
smoking mustache
ire destined for cannon-fodder
a grin to wedge past centuries
bikinis, at bottom, ferocious pests
and like snarling, staring into ore
long past microscopes
the gypped oath, chipping
along candy-cane lanes
legs for dollars, our sweethearts
when all dolls have laughed enough
gadflies or gallbladders,
one last innocent look,
before the droppings of coal
the ecstasy of rabbits
footprints in the snow
which shall hold no name
known bearers of the sun’s weight
barren as the pockmarks
shattered bullets in our lockets.
nicholauspatnaude 