Ten

the sleep of one is zero

the sleep of zero
produces shadows of monsters

cast on a sea of one
caravels of love and planets
navigating animal wind

zero revised to zero
one revised to one zero
the sleep of the wind
produces animal zeros

Nine

Praise be to crustaceans in Mme Crevette’s soup
that she keeps watch for us and that
the Mlle’s man sleeps til noon

Scorn to the lark’s cry
the celestial spheres
scorn to time’s torch in mine eye

I’ll walk to Figeac
where the laundresses by the Célé
still think me a mute

Eight

soon the Digital Sappho
will tell you all the places

where giant dinosaur teeth
rise from the earth

but first the Digital Sappho
will tell you all the places

where people are throwing out
their recently purchased appliances

Seven

in sonnets Berrigan found Ben Franklin graceless
in sonnets Mallarmé found trumpets graceless
Rilke thought the sonnet more real than grace
playing the glass armonica in the trumpet of his ear
my bread is a sonnet because I eat it
buzzards encircling the seven deadly arts
breadlines form tomorrow for want of grace

number nine number nine number nine
Kehre me on dead man
line eight is avant line ten is post
happy birthday Mr. Wordsworth in your grace
you preferred Milton to the pricks in London
come see what sonnets lurk in the reviews of Today’s Man
lake in daffodil in a lake in the daffodil

scouts from Mount Parnassus
chomp cigars in San Pedro de Macorís

looking for southpaws that follow chin
music with hard sliders away

to retire Romantics
in powdered wigs