s at extinction,
The volcanic instrument life itself.

Goals are these same vehicles
To operate weak desires.
Frustration defeats a goal
That will not fit.
29
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THE SPOKEN WORD
I touch your
face - where strands of whispery hair
dangle your thoughtful gaze through mine.

Clutching,
all the words not said
lie pale and broken
beneath forgery lies.

Eyes, our facial minnows, the mirror
images, flash too brightly
out of the shallows,
out of their stony commitments
towards believing
we cannot agree.
30
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Part III
TESTIMONY

SMEARS

A snowy morning
unfolding
I smear my eyes
the crimson details
from my life.
32
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TESTIMONY

When snow falls, there lives
the shrill cries that
leaves are not alone.

Each flake, a mute testimony
not a leaf falls before
surgery prunes the individual tree.

Cold November after
brown and white conspire,
the forest leaves a bleeding crust,
scar tissue from natural wars.
33
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FORTRESS SNOW

The embankment lies as heavy
edges on our lives.
The shadows of the rock,
piled drifts huge monotony's ledge,
accumulations by the side of the tree
wear thin visages;
the breath of summer eclipsed.

Snow reigns supreme;
teeters about the rim
of the city's existence.
Pettiness of man's realm - pretty
foliage of the transient,
wrappings upon our lives
brittle near the storm.

The reply of the eternal,
fire on stone
blazons reality
the peaked remains
of snow streaked sun.

Immensity governs us;
clarity of the temporal
fire set by the staccato
of man's rhythm.
34
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CIENFUEGOS

The white pin wheel of heat turns up the grasses' edge.
Some dried plant stalks shrivel,
then melt openly into layers of fire.
It is end - time for the community's Christmas trees.

Something akin to burnt offerings,
reluctant souls or
hedging captives kept alive
ghoulishly for some cannibal's feast;
this festival of crackling.

They have served their purpose, now.
Bound, no faggots need be applied.
Contumely, the quiet desperation darkens
the child's face.

The headlights rain down on Christmas' debris.
A hundred little fires as cigarette warnings
daub the night air.
The