& sulfur reeking eggs & kitchen matches;
this is how things get started;
& the house melting into the swamp's
viscous shadows, & the family asking,
do we hear drums or a pulse?
& chain lightning— what it vivifies
when it's whipping the soup electrically up
till phosphor & ions boil
& life slithers from chemical muck,
as though this were the world's original night--
time to start telling stories.
& the house has no chair for Plato,
& nowhere for Immanuel Kant to sit;
but there's a chair for Jesus,
& it's near the trash compactor
that grinds down fishbones before it spews a mulch
to sink, it's hoped, in the earth,
& creatures, amphibious, hungry,
crawl. Adam would gawk, but it isn't his place;
that's morning at the zoo, that's
a park on Peoria's outskirts,
elm crowns floating like green balloons just prior
to gravity's invention;
& there's nothing here that says, Heaven
or Newton; except in the house one clock ticks;
& what stars the cumulus
clouds don't feed on don't gleam like ideas,
aren't connected like dots by kids in the house;
they're holocausts, they're starving
& live off Mind. How could Blake answer
this radiance scorching the firmament &
smoking out God & carbon?
& below the ignis fatuus
between the cypresses glimmers more greenish than
Thanatos; & cypresses
& night hawks unthinkingly croak &
night's opening wide; no more word of mouth or
stories recalling first light,
there's only one house & it's melting
into one amoebic puddle & gonzo
deeper than psychology,
& sons & daughters find themselves,
their vertebrae squashing ferns as they lie back
to couple with giants
& beyond Freud's help & where, nearby,
lie strewn dilapidated washers & sinks
some deluge vomited up.
The family succumbs to the big beat,
& it's soup; then there's no place at the table
for Aristotle to sit,
& Prometheus needs a new hide-out;
a houseless porch near a back road curving back
on & devouring itself.