Somewhere, say, a slip-slopping mash or mush
or bubbling bog of abandoned name tags
on a ballroom floor frugging the wee hours through.
Pop. Sigh. Balloons release their airy souls.
Prepare themselves for damper, graver spirits.
A streamer untwists its silvery slight being.
The silent flotilla sways to the gurgles
of the gala's ankle-deep, salt, cold champagne,
sloshes knee-high now in the great gashed vessel
—doing a last dance with A with B with C....
Nearby, nameless swimmers in darkness kick out,
thrashing in the seawind-tormented wash...when
 
the stenciled life-raft of a NO SWIMMING sign,
sky-high atilt atop the last wave in the world,
comes drop-drop-dropping into range, in reach.
Some avid readers—keen-eyed, and literate,
and literal-minded, and obedient—
get it brilliantly and for dear life hang on.
 
*

And somewhere for a while a wind forsakes
a leaflet blown against some desert rocks.
Wind, wind has gone away—gone back for more.
One leaflet face up under the sunny azure.
Surrender! Surrender! Surrender Your City!
Or Suffer! Suffer! Suffer Consequences!
the page cries out to the populace of sand.
Gingerly, three jackals hearken, and sniff.
Lift up heads and ask the sun.
Ask wind, Wind, whereof do you speak?
Delicate, astute, tongue touches S.
Snake bit? Worm stung? Home.Quick.Tongue.Come.
—Smoke! And,yes,squiggle,of...mm,mm...sangre.
 
Alpha (first), then Beta, then Gamma initial
selfsame with showers of fine flourishes,
attesting Alpha, et al.—the real guys
and brothers, true owners, heirs and sole assigns
in perpetuity of turf hereabouts
and out as far as eye sees from boulder yon
to yonder scree—have read and duly noted Stuff.
 
* 

The fierce maenads of existence keep tearing
The Dictionary into deep, inscrutable
blizzards of Orphic confetti, swirling up,
and down on the stream parading its passage.
And, loveliest foam, the syllables, riding, sing
this moving beauty of the moment's novel body.
Nor will the river be as it was 
before words were set to water.