Tuesday

across a reddening ocean
of tangled cables, sinew,
or by a white bloody van upon
a bridge that does not reach,

one by every one the kids
get pulled like toyless crackers.
old moons, familiar soils. still,
the crones warn us in bullets

love is abstract, childish,
we suffer their unreal flag
in swathes of crime tape-
hyperbole, traditions of sickness,

a terrible romance, these apes.