Bold platinum moon
Ripe
As a woman's breast,
Projects me
Beyond the shadows
Of night's trees,
The phosphorescent
Sea,
Beyond hallucinated
Stars--
To all that shimmers
Within
This intimate dream
Barely remembered by
My day-spoiled eyes.

A spoonful of durian
exotic butter-like
dung,
slowly slithered
over and under my
hesitant tongue--

my silken senses
half emancipated,
half caught,
it occurred to me
the poet of worms
and lust and rot
would have widened
his nostrils
without qualm
savored
the salacious slop
sliding southward
into his gut--

stink has its station
in the making of life,
I realized just then
all good
and bad things
whether love or pain
fortune or frost
start
where they end
in a great steaming
compost--

my brain re-centered
by this poet's scent,
my unstuck probe
burrowed down deep
in the fecund muck.

The wind cut through its own belly
slamming downward
the nails in the roofs almost losing
their grip,
the wood frames like starved lungs
ballooning in and out
familiar shapes buckled, distorted,
from our small vantage,
a ghastly scene shifting perilously
off center
as it shoved and rammed its way
through the keyhole of our lives—

For a second a nail biting pause, a gap
as it let up,
a vacuum sucking up our nightmares—

And then the world outside ripped
wide open—
wielding its mad hammer
its cold-blooded will crashed down
knocking loose our senses
wrenching doors, battering panes,
clawing into every vent and crack,
its purple-black wings thundering
through our prickled ears—
it wanted all we had, and more—

We watched it barrel and blast
its way down the naked street
whiplash
the white-knuckled houses
slash and whirlpool
among the panicked trees,
the air stretched and contorted
in devilish knots—
it pulled at the root
of mind and stone and all between,
it tore at the fabric dividing
the living and dead,
till the grass screamed
and the worms underneath
cowered and moaned—

We saw a great cedar tip over
like a drinking straw and disappear
into the darkening well,
a child's toy was flung skyward
in an amazing arc—
then jackhammered against the ground,
a foolish crow took flight
flopping and cartwheeling
like a scrap of tar paper
through the thick magnetic whorl
as the last smear of daylight leaked
away and the blackness
hurled down like a meteor—

Behind quivering walls,
hopes bundled tight,
we waited—
our nerves whacked
by the near sound
of another cedar cracking
at the knees—

It raged it howled
immune to prayer
oblivious to fright
it sated itself—
with each gasp of the lamp
the world flickered
our limp souls sank deeper
into the dark mind
of everything else—

This roiling of birth and dung
This sun-slathered scene
Of rose and worm,
This decadent, muddied soup,
Things feeding on things
A temporary indugence
Prelude to a finer place
Unfouled by our senses
The impermanence of things--
What splendor beyond--
Relieved of eyes, ears,
Fingers, our life infested brain
Our earth-sodden heart,
Delivered forever from
Every bit of leaden substance,
The craving under our skin,
Every thing we know and love--
Such celebration of the soul:
No more stink of dying stars.