INVERTED CATHEDRAL

It won't fit in a snowglobe

floors go flowing to pupils of lava

points descending to the core of earth

in ornate catacombs

carnal art in its descriptive spirals

winding rivers of mortar and stone

linking masks along red lit corridors

stairs of reconfigured bone

doors with doors and latches with latches

rind of echoes that deepen

and sharpen against uncaught time

blind mouths singing from a lake of lime

root shaped tunnels with windows that look

into the soul of the dirt

peeled saints on a bed of cinders

torn skirts of the blueprint that hurt.

In the silicon womb

reaching fingers with their bones of light

keep a ticking clock on ice

to circulate the sacred particles slow

bands of solar systems row by row.

Ribbons pouring from the idol's mouth,

tendrils licking at a path of sugar.

Crucified ants making little noise.

Suds rising from a tank of fish

that look like swimming bullets

with faint transparent fins.

Secret ribs of the earth

their caves of ethereal honey.

Cubes of stunned airless space

holding blank hot consciousness.

Smoking closets of divine debris

half shut against a hellish sun

closing liquid eyelids.

Voices in a cloud of wonder

high above a veiled abyss

singing through boxes with magic wire

silk beds on unreachable platforms

fire forming concentric circles

jeweled letters are a list of griefs

of some flashing morning that won't

give way to noon and let the evening

send out boats like minnows

on the sharp frills of a separated sky

and its web cracked wide.

Forms cast in wild garments

quiet as the grave in mind

dancing on the ice that creaks their names

while the chandeliers play cherub's games

and the candles have bulbs not flames

in the sanctuary's swollen maze.

I am a jellyfish dripping

over these floors

watching the squares drink

up the bloody oil

letting the scales of a fake sky

flake and fall from the original

landing in an otherwise empty lot

bricks tangled in ropes of taffy

glass magnifies my third eye

and the multitudes after

lacing dark material together

moon in a cube of harp strings

drawers of compact light

separating from a high tower.

Swimming loops of royal blue

red tipped finger lakes

dead zones of raging gray

skin suit left lying

on a grass blood hill

melting into a map of fungus

swells where we swam

in naked cups of stone

green mud on sacred faces

beams of crude searchlights

flickering over the wounds

in time space

a long graffiti rail

guarding magnetized trains

of hail

THE GREATS

I swim with the greats: I see

how much greater they are than me.

Yet I swim in their midst:

it seems the only place to be.

They are flowing over the portals,

eclipsing all the radiant doors.

Yet the light pours.  It pours

through them like the water of life

they contain.  And it grows from all

creation's needed stain.

At the threshold, they are with me

like a nerve storm.  With me like

a rain of eyelashes, writing me

like nanotechnologic ink.

With me as I'm ripe to sink.

They don't need to feel anymore:

they simply emit.  I am with them

like a lover and not a whore:

but I would be their whore.

Their presence is the lion's

captured roar.  But they

are still wild.  Their departure

is as mysterious as their birth.

They never belonged to man.

Now they belong to God,

their shattering maker.

Their return must come

through the unworthy:

this is the irony that pleases

Him best, for He is Anarchist.

They linger near the rim

of a great fiction: these

necessary devils and their

warped angelic diction.

The fireplace of these

senseless locations

whispers all their names.

And the song frays to extend

its living ends: one burrows within.

OPENING DAY (Alive For Business)

This world was made for liars,

fools, and the obedient.

None lead, or follow: all drift

together on unnoticed currents

far outside the sacred.

What do I call the sacred?

A fist inside a grain of rice.

A flower popping within

a flickering oven.

A prolapsed moonlit sky

leaking bats like tears.

I am the enemy here.

Unseen entertainer of the spheres

with many lips, my rebirth

is a drug trip, having taken this body.

I stack the books of their dead god

with the countenance of some

vibrant poison frog.  There's no home

here in their fog of law: I am their

extinct claw scraping letters raw.

Their underworld can't be counted.

I am hound and denizen

of its accelerating corridors.

A thief's unwanted seed

is my genetic core:

I just mind the store.