I texted a wickety-split, tax-declaring New York-based international escort, a moonlighting, all-pro Kit, whose day job on Wall Street yields no bonus.

a thinking man's bird high above coated with scent of life

But I sense a tremor in your soul as well, young friend, a yearning of some sorts.

when I said good morning I meant

Let your father stay through that dinner when his mistress needed him, while your mother was on the verge.

We walk with our heads down, maybe 15 of us, moving under a sun that has grown to encompass everything. Everything is in hues of orange and red like a bloody eyeball on fire.

and then he began to sing, along with the ghostly villagers

A kind of sucking darkness into A kind of noir celebration of despair

I saw blood. The walls of the bar were completely covered in red shag carpeting. Had I been thrown back in time to the Seventies? It felt as if I had entered Hell itself. No, this was not Hell. This was the Aryan-Brotherhood's version of the movie Shaft. I…

...he had that same grin, better than a racy French picture.

.

In the neon light and barroom shadows,

Listening too much to the night, with its whistles, bright lights of luminescent bursts like leaves on fire, or the raised ear of a cow in the purple mist, or the curled tail of a pig foraging in the night.

the gambling priest stands in the morning fog/red moon hangs in the sky/the army of seven houses marches over the hill

"It all began with a painting," I said. "Mostly blue. Acrylic. Naturalistic in a modern sense. She was stylized but recognizable, and her breasts were exposed. Everyone could see her disordered skirt. The painter was a fan of Herrick.