Metal Flasks

Metal flasks were filled with things that would keep them warm and alive through the night of the scorpion like stinging cold of Nissim the E’s poem written possibly in some meter and it is impossible to remember if that poem rhymed – it must have – almost all poems written in that time were made to rhyme – was it written in that time – what time was it when it was written – what time was it when every poem was made to rhyme – there are no solid clear answers but just pretentious knowledgeable statements that are no use to anyone meaning nothing – no butter no milk plain water that in opaque white like a foggy morning of November after Kafka’s birthday either to the left or to the right cockroach on birthday cakes shifting face slices looking at the mirror in Vienna, a laughing hyena is all it takes to make a scary night out of a plain lonely night like the coins and marbles inside a little stringed bag of Alaskan snow and ice mixed with gravel in galleries of institutions where they charge a bomb to let in anyone – to get in and to walk around looking at fainting paintings forever carbonating water with hopes of giving things a twist and to shout out loud standing on top of lean tall towers connecting the center of the earth to a corner of the sky spinning, rotating ellipses making solid ellipsoids of winter if tonight a traveler to sing and sting an album in postmodern Italian