STAR SIMILES

The night is stuck with stars
like pork with cloves:
a lit up, perforated mole.
Circling warily around each other,
fixed in their revolutions, dangerous
as testy dragons in the spring,
stars interlock their glittering fangs
in blazing gravitational feuds.

Turning on its spit, the Earth
from deep midnight to midnight slides
and slides these fires across our eyes;
but we see tens where hundreds lie.
We live submerged in seething air
which ambushes the travelling light
and macerates its brilliant spears,
splintering the immaculate images of the stars.

From diving deep in atmosphere
we rocket up like pearl fishers,
with minds gasping for space.
Erupting with a handsome splash,
we see the hidden stars fan out
like sugar spilt on polished retinas,
or caltrops strewn against the cavalry
of all the sizzling universe.

We saunter out among the stars;
we glance at solar systems here and there;
meander through the dust clouds, hang around
in districts where appalling monsters roam
from star to star in inconceivable ships,
hugging the profits of their horrid trade;
and places where the most ethereal beings,
compounded of sunbeams and fields of force,

dart spitefully through lovers as they lie
wrapt in each other's parapods, entranced,
on curly lawns beside a midnight stream,
and listen to the fishes' glorious song
floating like incense toward the star-stuffed night.