Some people dash through fire,
others plunge through ice.
Is Reality the only thing
if Chaos is the King?
Ring all your golden christmas bells,
the sewer rats still dance.
Then the ice they buy and sell
will show up in your drinking glass
all muddied and black,
that iridescent toxicity
in which the ship is lost.
The mutineers choose weapons
and toss the captain overboard
on to the reefs of broken glass -
each mirrored fragment seizes nightlight
and casts werelit visions
of her home bleeding, collapsing
as the boulders fall dead center.
(She goes into her heart and mind
which reminds her of departing kin
who told her of the doom that wheezes
down the orchard's razor walks.)
--Too cold?-- we'll leave this
television frame behind
to go and seek the whip instead.

II
The radio commander never stops.
Hilarity dances with dank despair
barefoot through the hot springs.
Mudslides block the view.
She seeks a serpent that doesn't bite
but settles for a badger's den
with herself as Cinderella,
Joan of Arc, the Virgin Mary
Or a vulture picking meat.
She must yell in a crowded train
that "RUBBER PLANTATION WORKERS
BEAT SEEDLESS GRAPES!
VENUS IS BEING INVADED BY DOGS!