If Once Pleasingly Collectable [Before the Ishtar Gate]

Now the exhibit spurs shoppers who might otherwise walk away
The cracked paintbox of remade gate taken in before café spritzers and a citrus tart. 
Certainly there is always rain on the way, in a world not as cruel
As theirs, an oasis culture with walls patterned like a cardback
Where the love goddess baked her bricks. In a sort of farewell
Procession the river went west, and too, its supply of cedar beams 


Too far in afternoon, the firewood requirements for another populace beaming
In their matching blues. Somewhere a lion lifts its tail, their collars away,
Every modest, self-contained horizon bade her open the gates well
Until every stitch had been removed. To flatter the eye of a king, tarts
Gathered like broken idols in a clutter of intensity, and in the back
Superbly relaxed in 120-minute hours, the maid slept alone. Cruelly

She had begun to remove the horizons from her landscapes cruelly
Exposed to the winds, where a piece of sky dropped to earth beaming
Into the vacancies of our suburban views. Her fading date on the back
The number of feathers lost in the struggle and its hidden thorns merely a way
Of the photograph and folded blanket of a pool. Since the shouting tarts 
Across neighboring rooftops can imagine for us an underworld just as well,


For others shed their wings. Disrobing beyond the seven gates dark as wells
Gifted as we are with many directions to blot the gaze of desertion, if to cruelly
Use the words of the lady under the earth. Aching to hurt her unnoticed, the tart is
Devitalized, for the bull would not mount. Proceeding from an aisle of booths, beaming
Devotees sprawled in the dirt awaiting the return of their earrings, going the way
Of foiled tangerines to be undone. With a new arm around her, she pulls back


Forming in the stranglehold, just as the sacred cows press fearful inventions back
Into precious earrings. To be whisked off into apartments of our own, knowing our wells
From the whiff of our urochrome, so she married. Now limiting our explorations, a way
Binds you to vanquish the pride of one's child. That the dead rise attending the cruel
Presence known only by its shadow, a pendant hanging between two breasts of a tart  
Sets up the terrible thirst. Not so much faces as molten casks thrown from beaming


Battlements. Show us some beloved's pillow-- tall, fair, dried saliva halfway up, beaming
Goddess giving once for all. So we escape by rushing through where the gates back
Into windowless plaster. With centuries less light of the sun, a king is forsaken of his tarts.
For a time I remained stupefied before a loosely-fitted inscription issuing flames as well
As the result of his quarrels. The cattle tell us of the one door to an inheritance cruelly
Dictated, speaking silently to no one. After being satisfied with the victors wiping away 


Dried saliva halfway up the neck, beaming at progress, a satisfied customer goes the way
Forsaken of tarts. Loosely-fitted inscriptions issue flames, yet the name drops into collective wells
Cruelly dried up before a golden stock arrived. We rush to escape back into the evening boulevards.