Charles North
Air and Angels
Sine qua non of bed wetting
Sire of too-close recall, conquering mastiff
The one that got away, of obloquy,
Compressor of doubt into a herd of gold
Genius of the herdsman, sex of the idiot,
Rheingold of disaster, litigant of hardened arteries
Spearhead of the most devastating alliances
The widow of despair (widow's peak of kindness)
And cleanliness, that hair trigger
Speech, once it is judged halcyon, hair space
The covenant kindles, slice of life
In the homophonous descent towards cover,
That flaws the vandal and brings the liaison to grief
By tilting the atoms of its attachment,
There, among the revivalism finery, beyond the fertile
Awe that makes an axiom of opacity, and beyond
Distraction peals in the lymph of gazes, glazed
Gender pudding that gavels the fall-out, as
In Buck Rogers; Rhenish; Hebrew euphony that
Startles; Chartism of Icarus, towards that copper reticle
Trifling with hate, havoc's cognate, to certainty,
Junta that films its dog days, bright tiger eye
Charles North, New and Selected Poems, Sun & Moon Press,
1999.