To a dead man’s room

Did you always feel aired out, or
bleated, as in an empty O; pathetic

parenthetic; the walls ringing
for that which they’re without; was it

so, or did the opened space
hold full possession of the loss;

an ocean breadth in which
the act gets carried out, & out.

if they catch us tonight, we hold court in the street, awaiting

the arbitrage of the morning- stars. Plumage of tongues

rattling in enameled cages, grinning warlike as chimpanzees;

we be the dogs that scent
the havoc, electing the weak.