.....

Above and below
a new orbit glides across the curved sky
cosmic union a crass cartoon of wholeness
the normal lens over the hill people

harmless psychotic warrior-god
lord
about to be destroyed
every shape that's born to finish his melancholy island

wires through the weatherhead and blend of crystalline
the disembodied recuperate in a yellow room
lighting translucent leaves and flowers
turned again by the crown wheel, the decadence following the war
someone has planes while he has none

the center of fertility, mythology of earth
met as one, the world egg
stretching itself and growing across
the ultimate slide-show streams through a smashed dome roof

earth-mother, even the navel of sex
because his long legs could compass the vast passion of ancient places

.....

Maybe it's the blood in the body that thinks these thoughts
or the language laid over it
that becomes deeper than its beginnings
gongs and creaking of doors into machine code
the frenzy of world-changing beasts
reared on wastes from a brewery
the edges of newly shod feet walking streets
made for riding in cars
the whole plan of the flesh finally collapsed in a heap of sticks

.....

The hero descends to depths of dumbness
where not even the poignant speeches can find him
pummeled by the coolest of fists
balls swollen by the lash of a rope-knot
asshole turned to yarn unraveled
by a coat hanger that found him late
face singed by a knife print
looking beautiful at the bottom of the ocean
his crashed car also quite beautiful
finally bathed and crucified with the boards
and the best nails of the Home Depot
driven through his merman remnant
laughing at the dramatic mantle of the roiling
purple black sky laughing
resurrected to stand in the resurrected hand
of the resurrected greatest automobile company
feet adrip on the backseat healing slowly
then quickly the crowds with a familiar salute
and finally our loving tyrant
with all the scars he suffered to get laid
or never to get laid
is found in a thousand bright previews
performing the same feats over and over again
in cheaper and cheaper guises
until the animal of history worships him
and he becomes a fossil in its slobber
all his forms a candelabra digitized
to light the kings and tables
the hero ascends to giddy heights of talkiness
where many thousands and many more than thousands
speak for him on the future of television
and his taint is the taint of the ages

.....

Lemon-cat, brown-white silver mask,
the morsels of time are not for you to eat,
they fall from the far-built ceiling
in little strips, galactic wisps
that barely make your whiskers twitch,
you welcome the fire's heat from a near table,
the doors of the place are patterned in your stripes,
there is no symmetry that does not find us
wounded, uneven in the feet, in the breast,
in the faintness of blood that only
powers toward death, and we feisty
with brightness of eye until dullness
threatens the striking power of all we affection,
and the quaintness of your weaponry is kept
in microcosm, and to be petted
your blinking tows all hitching lights
to their own seasons, so that we may follow
each furred version of one another,
with all the perturbed differences that creatures carry
not quite disintegrated into sleep
electric company.

.....

Thin pieces of cold from one of the goddess's eyes
to knock him off his horse in a bubble chamber
veins with lengths of plastic carved on the fireplace
nozzle through the chimney trim white helicopter
nuptial hymns at the top nailed to the edges
hands of a human beast no plants with flowers
the anvil the soul no birds body-disc must be
thousands of iron parts and pieces green and still
a hole for each plant a dark pool small pieces of lettuce
that small crimes deserved death and that ladybugs visit an orange
a ringing sound a launch site to watch magic
fabric scorched from long blasts a booming sound
a shrill sound pick of a sweepstakes winner
a drum, or a whistle forged while cherry
the street and the outside world by cells and fibers
hard stones, a great quantity of blood 1,000 pounds of plants
he pries the calories of the sun like an old man reclining.

TIME FOR A NEW MASK

Now to the place where the moving firestorms
are no longer stopped by fog
doubt is the only constant companion

world crowded by superstructures
that take care of it, badly.

There is a lion in the mind of the flesh
who looks on aggravated, waiting for one
to submit to greatness and give all this new meanings.

Give me the wrath in your heart
and I will look after it
show me your loneliest landscape
rippled by the sound of shells breaking
I will help you to take it over
though my form is a tyrant
moving at times against me
in pickled youth, with a hatred for me alone
and a sidearm that inhabits my liver

when you are so tender to my foolishness
and I fall through the gulps of the earth in a usual way
and nothing that we are glued to feels familiar
in all the froth of what we wish
so it will happen and exist beyond us
from our hints
the curvature staked out
the presence of blue yonder in the space-time continuum

.....

Certain depth, shapes with any number of dimensions, among the robots
a wild yonder where the layman is lost the spiritual center
and I could easily lay down a multitude apart from society
for the plying within those walls of joy, nervousness
in which the bride did not survive his hatred of Earth and
of plague ships to the dogs, the grandparents, the toddlers
spares the dumb due worlds

.....

I want you to live in my coat,
to just move in, adorable woman,
all the spheres that broadcast your being
when I feel homesick for books
and things are all collapsing in a way that pleases me,
long pieces of chain the bottom layers for anything
the way of wrapping their bodies in heat and light
no more to it than masses of its own viscera
smitten with desirelessness
swamps filled up with dead land changed oceans moved

Outside it is cool charcoal comes from wood
carbon is black the sky is black the coal burns dead plants
and I think of the lovemaking and the music of the poor,
with a smirk that the centuries have put on my face
'til I go to my infancy--

Be a trunk against, humming
the loneliness of other trunks,
a forestwoman for rapture of the apartment,
a warrior in the electric shower
beams from a TV stall
the corridors of light close

I want you to live in my coat
the passage through which the sea blanches and the surface cries

Abattoir Static

Even in the labyrinthine vats of rat shit broth,
you make your stand.  You are a pine
holding the keys to a keyless kingdom,
standing somewhere on a platform of
vegetation impossible, so close to the sun's hold

They move you along in engine boxes,
from one wrong place to another, you keep
a grin stuck to the torch, the molten features
that followed us out of the womb, from lips
through the forest we seek, a surging
metal-tugged nightmare of beauty touchable

music stands sprouting with scented needles,
carved rivulets between trees trembling,
trembling because we are alive with the same
tail-symphony, corroding memory because
to remember is only a mushroom from the nucleus,
impacted forgetfulness,

We rise from the hills, behemoths who fenced
our cow-eyed understanding,
when we were only human,
before and after we looked down
the blown tunnel of our making
fields singed for sky-eyes
foot-beats of our solemnity disintegrated into song.

Something under the skin as a controller of light

presuming them to be too cold to look at for domestic comfort
crude as the exposed works

in a coat of air
on a single breath
their wings have become minutes of rest

the cardinal rule of total darkness
with special precautions
after a silver ion is snatched away to make the iron frames available for headlines
fold is rich in small blood restless color

violet made by mixing red and furnishings
a message in print can die

Earl of Basement

His belly is a footstool for a serpent.  His arms drool.
When did he come into village history, gaping like a loon camera?
With windpipes strapped in razors, all whistles stopped,
all bells stilled, to descend to a lower pealing

A small ship of friends is cruising into the fire's outline,
tinsel windows from a few yards of forest, the roadside winking,
the welling up and dying out of a consciousness, a teaching
through the eyes, a smudge of light-smeared
human photograph, tearing from the fabric of natural light

He's the driver in a thicket of reflection.
The liquid painted on dry bone that will flake off against the sunrise.
And he is resonant to the machine of the earth.

LEMON

That what I am is not effervescent,
that by the time I see you I have turned so many corners
that somehow we've become strange to one another,
that I cannot say it without a litany,
that I do not know how to express the drive of human love,
consistently, without a dagger,

that this cat and this fireplace
are the first and last world
trembling at 4 a.m., claws buried absently in denim
so gentle to the hell of the morning
fur silver and black
drag my eyes to the blindness of childhood
and on your way back--

this casserole of a brain, these ways of forgetting--
bring me your feline launch, finally,
give me up to the hum in my lap,
petite reassurance.