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.