with Agnes Pelton’s Prelude, 1943
The repercussions of war the multiplying of god’s face
in a strobe-like assault of diffidence and death
is in the lower right-hand corner
of the primarily yellow painting
of war
In the cave
in the lower right-hand corner
jumble of cave
like sticks like camouflage traps
or where the elders go to meditate self-immolate
fall forward
into the universe of their bowls
The cave
is where the war is
tea
red blood red
bloody cheeks
bodies exposed,
movies projected on skin turned
inside-out
the rest of the painting is yellow
Gears turning in the sky yellow gears
the color of geese
or men choking
children’s eyes
who watch them choking
+
how many flowers die on tables
on a roof held up with mold
the bionic vase
in which all pets of memory are born,
the pasteurization of war
in a cave
a glare
the dystrophic loneliness of a desert
wanderer
or wandering the desert
or the desert wandering
egg is
thick
as the trunk of a tree
cross-sected
I lost too once
stared into the spectacle of deceptive coloration
while war was snapping in
the lower right-hand corner