the secret life of things

there's a secret life to things,
like Ricky said,
that inspired slant of light
that falls upon the page
and burns Apollo's lines out of
Atlas's lesser verbiage,
the language of shadows,
of Pablo's sax notes and fleeting glances,
that electricity that cracks the air
and beckons the landscape listen...
that crackles through the hapless city night
of Bottoms' dreams
to in the morning
from 101 dew drops to glisten...

it's Midas' fabled curse
the silver-screened lining of madness,
that Janus-hidden city "through the window"
where sunshine maddened men
read sinister-tinted dream news
from papers that float by themselves
in Baker street-light lit pipe-smoke
just outside the mighty walls
of cloud-enshrouded Xanadu:
that truth-entranced, rainbow-lit
Macbethian knock-shattered palace
of lovers, poets and idealists
of sickened pretty visions "illegal in every town"
taking their stolid form in the shadows...
as real unseen as if seen