i. Mensis Ivliis

     You who govern the course of the sun,
     fading stars and glaring stares paired like
     cracked mirrors impersonating their
     vain creator, blind to improving
     themselves and repairing what lights their
     souls from within, those remnant flares of
     solar wind moving clockwise around
     an incinerator chimney stacked
     like a minaret, spiraling which
     thunderclaps of clouds cling like plastic
     wrap to a smoking phallus, melting
     like smoke rings do from a cigarette,
     a staircase riding a broomstick through
     to the end of which your storm’s entire
     army of fire-worshipping servants
     carry baskets of burnt offerings,
     fervid and suppliant, providing
     your flickering myth with kindling and
     provisions sacred enough to kiss,
     opened mouths and closed fists rapping tight
     against your conquest’s monumental-
     yet-pragmatic column like a kid’s
     lips embracing a warm gun, as if
     happiness swallowed them—taking it

ii. Mensis Avgvstis

     in, I untie from its height’s seeming
     conundrum a fraying fringe of some-
     one else’s reality, slowly
     unravelling its absurdity,
     marvelling, as all your planets must,
     at its reach, a finger far beneath
     which I feel so insignificant,
     so very quotidian that is
     to someone’s disappearance for which
     complete strangers dedicate temples
     and erect these towers in concrete
     jungles, hell’s vertical exhaust pipes
     such as this—so tell me, nemesis,
     how is it I manage to exist,
     persist in living without giving
     a shit about how you made all of
     us and this experiment we must
     inhabit? Should I not aspire, like
     them, to climb your cock’s summit to its
     throbbing, messianic promise (some-
     thing always coming), or did heaven
     forget to manufacture me with
     a desire to meet, or simply glimpse,
     every summer’s absent father?