What need to tell of autumn’s storms and stars

It can hit you hard as a whip of grainy dust blown in

your eyes the realization that you need to tell someone

all of it even the worst in words not cheapened with showy

sound effects and with or without the dismembering con-

ventions of allegory--that you need to write about this woodpile

glowing between us like a dragon’s hoard of gold-plated

bones--do more than to sit in the dust eating spiders and crust  

whether or not you’ll be taken for mad and if you are

taken for mad at least you’ll be left alone.   What can I tell you

about the evils of other people except that often I’ve found

human interaction to be a ferocious and almost feral feasting

not unlike the one Dante finds in which Count Ugolino

eternally feeds on the uncooked flesh of his son afterwards

wiping his mouth with the hair of the man he has just eaten.

Now that I’ve covered that let’s step out into the autumn evening

and happily--perhaps drows’d with the fume of poppies--look up

because the dim lit sky is almost drooling with our dying

hence our wind-swept laments of gratitude and longing.