"Scatter thy pearls"
Dips in his Capri bathhouse could not cure the open sores
that spotted the cheeks of the Emperor Tiberius.
Rain is trenching through the flower beds, red slugs are blooming
on the leaves of the garden like pustules or blood-blisters.
At his villa Tiberius raised babies to suckle milkless breasts,
old man with the unrejuvenated mammaries of old men.
The bean-stalks' broken stems nod upon the splints,
the pods tough, not sweet, the closest thing to children
that I nurture with water laced with crystals blue as Zyklon B,
blue food more crystalline than the highest Alpine summer skies,
airless blue glimpsed by mountain climbers, jet pilots, ascetics.
The plant-food I broadcast from my hand stimulates the roots to life.
But too soon my carelessly scattered pearls fill this journal,
not with crystals, but the pearliness of water and mucus, the lining of shells.
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