—grieving little losses in the absence of your awareness,
in your ignorance of the hole I carved for your attention.

The nonsense in my cosmos pushes fact for fiction, writes
secret tomes of melancholy, homes for farce and folly.

Lingering on images I break commandments,
write demanding epilogues in place of prologues.

And why, when there's no place for aught but epitaphs?
I've a terrible case of celestial delirium, a planetarium

of spinning delusions, fractious stardust blooming
on the tongue, though bitter past the teeth.

A comet cherry red, shimmering from tail to head, stellates,
cremates, births a phoenix rising from those early days

which (note the experts) were only ways
I went astray . . . signifying nothing.