telling the night from a one-horse bike
shelling the night from a rickety old trombone
spieling the night from a rickety old tram
rattling along the ecliptic

the first one hundred trombones of any year
the tombstone trombones
that rag tag marching band of a one-horse town
the tag horses of a one-snort town

riding the night on an unlit bike
refilling the night from an old black jar
a trombone century, stepping
high with a black box in tow

weakly streetlit streets
the smell of pan hamburgers
the loving care in yellow windows
bright & toolstrewn garages

the moon swarms over the hills
the stinking halls of Venus
where the convicts shoveled sulfur
rifling the night from an old black sack

moon over sargasso venus
the weaklit hulls of worlds
orbiting in violethulled wonder
shelling planets like peanuts

the moonlit hulls of worlds
standing all in a line there
on our way outward to Neptune
the internets of Neptune

the boarding houses of Venus
the rooming halls of Mars
the trailer parks of Mars
trailer parks on fire

the weaklit stargasso void
the storied sargasso void
sarcastic in the seaweed void
shelling peanuts like planets

Venus is strugging in the wrack
Venus is caught up in the sargasso
Mars is becalmed in the doldrums
Enough to throw the chargers overboard

The moonlit houses of Mars
The moonlit stalls of Mars
The moonlit reactors of atomic Mars
The stalinist trombones of an atomic Mars

The tribes of an atlantic Mars
Becalmed in a gyre of space
The interplanetary gulfstream
Carrying seaweed to Pluto and beyond