Before Dawn with Angel Raziel
You bathe with loofahs
Soaked in papaya juice
And delight
In gently draping cloth
Over laughter
Watching it swell
With light
Then peeling it off
And wrapping it
On your heads
As turbans.
And after sowing roses
In his suit’s seam
You sit still
As he dips jasmines
In yellow
And swirls them
For hours
Across your eyelids
Until somewhere
In your soul
Pupils untrained
In music
Lift French horns
And play adagio.
Moons,
Beside themselves,
Lie beside oxen
Naked.
Bees talk dirty
To poplar trees.
Husbands,
For their wives,
Model panties.
And notes–
Long erased
From the heart–
Line back in scale
And slowly rise
Like newly released
Lanterns
Floating upward
In the eastern sky.
