Toward the Amaranth Gates of War or Love

Tonight the city is glimmered.

       What’s left of an August monsoon
is heat and wet. Beyond the open window,

       the streetlamp is a honey-skirted hive I could split
with my hand, my palm a pool of light.

       On the television screen, bombs like silvery bells
toll above blurred horizon—

       All I know of war is win.
What is a wall if not a thing to be pressed against?

       What is a bedroom if not an epicenter
of pillage? And what can I do with a hundred houses

       but abandon them as spent shells of desire?