BATS

Bats hang from trees like angels

above the silent empty streets

they drop and creep from door to door

sword in hand where love sleeps

in the depths of unlit corridors

to sound the mindless ancient bells

gowned benighted amputees

blasted kidneys and heaped gowns.

Trumpeting Gabriel on his golden cloud

soots the sun with coming ages a clown

who sums the city up and takes one of fifty.

Geometric fury fumes in a stack backed

up against the river, dammed corpses spill

screeching nails on coffin lids, eyelids

shamed blind the windows, a sobbing light

reaches down and touches each of us.

The busted part dangles from the leaves

brushing the wings of a wounded Phoenix

who sits in its pyre and ponders the way

from wood to flame and then the why.