Strange Gods

Strange Gods

Early on their tablet was tumbled runes and I
never saw their nails if they were low, weak,
or kind, - till I was made low or kind, raised
up blue enfant arms swinging rope inside
a circle made of stranger space.

If you need something up on a wire a stranger has
already left his home lightly blown on handbills to
country crossroads; a child's hot wax smithy soul
may have a jewel you can never pay; gods always
enter houses holding something strange.

Their masks were wonderful, full teeth bearded birds
that ate your spleen; eyelash teething worms crowded
on eyes, scale and bone. If you must sink to knees,
you will smithy in your kingdom golden knees; you will
eat the sins of lepers if one son become a sin eater.

Hands appear on dead kings walls, one wheel pulls
skin back against the teeth, still softer smithied metal
wheels puzzle in the lock wrenching butcher's
aprons daily washed to hear the shout in streets
tightly packed in trucks with eyes on stars.

Raised arm flash fire shadows seen on burnt walls
signal to us deeper marbled veins of studded ore
stationed on a stranger's circle stepping wheel
my backward twisting athletic arch,
my proper arc against his path.