1. Vendémiare

      What begins as your heart wanting

      to be heard

      out, finally, beyond all

      capricious arrayals

      proves the devil to redo:

      you step into the street

      and find

      you’ve accomplished

      a kind of bolero over and above

      the specific blessings

      of freedom (search, seizure,

      silencing, etc.) that coagulate

      into magnets for good

      sense, boutique art.

      The other year, you unlocked,

      let’s say, some old alchemical emblem-

      book, its tendons rubbed

      raw by innumerable pressings, and you

      couldn’t resist adding

      a pinch of your own dirt,

      smartening it up

      for the next performance

      of Vive L’Humanité.

      And what is it you see

      in the other focus

      of your elliptical flight

      back from the republic of afar?

      A well-appointed loft

      in the fourteenth arrondissement,

      a wife swallowing a sabre,

      and taciturn daughters

      with gold nipple-piercings,

      lavish Ukiyo-e tattoos.