Flakes of old lives on film

carried by a stream of molten wreckage

tongues pooling in a furnace mouth

purple vines of an unsettled south.

Naked forms on barrels drifting

through smoke battered arches and

nudging the machinery of dreams.

In cycles a quartz lady screams.

Ladders are floating

and bending in air

each link is a painted portal

through stunned clouds

to blue playful bodies

over rutted crests

of cemetery hills

mushrooms blooming

from the footsteps

of the devils of the dawn

blankets of leaves

arrange a crux around

my phosphorescent torso

root's poison pulsing every branch

sap lit with oil of caverns

egg's map of the deathless depths.

Blossoms on the waning tree

bright thistle mouths

shaking a video frame

squirrels munching on a lit fence

currents dancing over lonely lanes

beneath a granite tower

paths over the mountain

carry slow moving dogs

each one the same white color as the snow

Blades of raw inertia

make war upon

an individuated corpse.

You tried to plug their breaking dam

with your flesh: they pulled you out

and cursed you for the flood

that they unleashed.

You wasted your martyrdom

on a horde of ingrates.

Now they celebrate

your willingness to be killed.

There is no place for humanity

among humankind.  Stop trying

to save the masses.  Their doom

will be yours.

Imagine a sober Bukowski.

Imagine a self-indulgent Buddha.

Imagine a profane, sarcastic Christ.

Imagine an anti-war, anarchist Muhammad.

Imagine a Gandhi who no longer gives a fuck.

Throw their stories away

throw their respect away

throw their values away

throw their entertainment away

throw their beliefs away

throw away the cancer that cures

their cancer.  They have no answers.

REQUIEM

From the entrails of dead dogs,

from the trickle of cracked brains,

from the copulation of oiled androids

comes a sad and disembodied song.

The surfaces change

but the depths remain the same.

And now those depths

are swallowing your fake world.

There is no escape

from entire lives lived in falsehood,

no relief to be found

behind another clotted mask,

no mercy in the grip of your

monotonous and automatic master.

From the pink blood of shells

the sea vomits up in froth,

from the chains wired back together

no matter how many times they are broken,

a tuned cacophony rises much too carefully

and the simulation continues.

Truth was stillborn in this world

and its cells fade out like tendrils into a void.

People are social beings: we want

to be noticed by our killers

as we flail down ruined avenues,

glad to be jeered as we die:

better to be mocked by these lunatics

than left alone in silence.

Even the soul of solitude

abides in an inverted violence.

From infant skulls in welded doorways,

from a land of pepper and a land of salt,

from banquet tables left sideways

by a row of tortured grapes...

Want more poetry?  Fuck you.

This is mine.  Write your own

in your own weary blood.

Stuff it down with rags and hack and hack.

Gears chew human meat

to produce utilitarian architecture.

These structures drain emotion

and increase numb obedience.

This is to be celebrated

with every square on the calendar.

We are glad to be civilized

cleansed of all identifying features.

Hate your neighbor within

the limits of the framework.

Express your angst with impotence

to make the blow go down smooth.

This is the joy of democracy.

Our brave enforcer androids

share our sophisticated ideals.

Wound them and you shit

on the storyboard.  Don't

muss the narrative with such

unnecessary feeling.  Extinction

comes for all, it must be

greeted with humility, maturity

and wisdom.  Call out

the glorious names of some

old books.  Our savior has

arrived in cellophane.

Crucify unruly spirits

starting with the errors of the brain.

We share the deep deliciousness

of pain.

Looking for a spout of unknown water

that broke a rock and fell into the sky

wings of paper fallen from departure

gems of plastic fallen on the roots

of disappeared trees.

A crushed salt grain

blown along by violent whispers

powder clinging to the bones

of a chicken who was born alone.