Beneath

Beneath a red lightbulb

innumerable doves swim as if

in a cold, gold sun.

Birth, creation,

a ruinous origination.

Decomposition settles in.

Bibulous boozers scratch at beer,

flick the air with brown fingers.

Intemperate cuckolds.

“Declare your bones,”

they say in whispers

thick as honey.

Time is arrested

as the production of long shadows

hushes the brown room,

but not the annelid which eats the dirt

that falls from the shade

like black snow.