Of the town square fountain
That the Generals’ children chipped
Into pieces with hammers and chisels
To throw when they reached the castle.
The three Generals in front,
Each with a different Holy Trinity mask,
Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
And each with a spear,
Stopped at the moat that circled
The castle with poisonous water snakes
And yelled at the King to return
Their breath to them that he stole
And gave to the stones’ and mountains’
Jaggedness.
The mob intended to threaten the King
With these sharp edges. His army had begun to defect.
The Generals were once his closest war advisors.
Now their medals had been burned and they stood
With hairy chests and arms glistening in
The moonlight and hearts of their heads
Dead.
2.
The space in between the three Generals
Is engulfed in the flames
Of their former leader’s abstract heart, in
The shadow of a leaf-shaped pyramid.
The journey from the dark of the flat base,
Entered from outer space,
To the dry wind breaking the last stem
From the limb of a ghost’s skeleton,
Consists of the bones of a fish,
A constellation fossilized where space meets ground.
And water the stars. Maybe grains of sand
On the pyramid’s dark bottom got lapped
By waves of sound, vibrating through the giant
Blocks’ narrowing symmetry until the tip was reached:
An antenna’s tongue, tasting a liquid silver sunrise
Slathered into the blocks
Held together like teeth to gums.
A lightning bolt on each side of a third eye
Revealed a dark gray cloud above a rained-on leaf,
Shining, tender and flesh-colored, on the ground of a heart
Near another crimson leaf, on the trail
That leads to the world and its objects as body.
When the three Generals rescued heart
From the politicians who tried to use it for a war economy,
Image was on the roof of the castle bathing in white sunlight.