The skin is misanthropic, rippling down with fetching thirst,

tampering alcoholic and,smacking with mud, the wood holds

an atlas in the skeleton of a home; a hermit grave given stage

and velvet staircase,

 save, for the bloated glove,

waltzing, wanting on the snubbed axis – inside, a libel for a healthy wage

and outside, days…He is/ she is a woeful hand, jilted in the grooves

of transit, and pendulous on the lips of No,

and is never seen.

But what suspense is as deft as that of the pilgrim reflecting

a wall to walk across? The ghost of a glass aches autistic

and stares and stares

but never sees. This is a gothic novice, and no dent demented

could reprieve

the life with vein of suicide, and so it waits for an edge

that whispers Believe,

that the moss is a Garden of Eden,

giving family, a swallowing family

and is a human in a holocaust.