I fall asleep in the bathtub imagining water tanks on every side,
and particles raining through the dream-lagged air
where they stretch for miles, gurgling transparently,
their pipes in the earth.
The swamp tendrils of a galaxy's future bloom
extend from every gland to join
the arabesque superimposed
of civilization upon them.
My thoughts on the ceiling stripped,
the sun reddening and making some new gambit,
I wake up in the bathtub and every raining particle
sprouts an ugly market.

.....

 From one young newt As the egg divides,
so much glass was impossible; lenses, housings, clouds of marine
 kinetic nations open up to us, we re-enter the kingdom flooded in light
 a vivid greenish blue a speeding bullet and a splashing
                                  drop of milk a safe and stable flashbulb
 yellow, orange and green weight to turn a miniature paddle wheel
       heir to every action of ultraviolet vents, hot springs and geysers,
torture for prophecies--the notochord and somites
       the gray crescent in the newt, the drum back and forth the drum stop rolling
         a print between time complete with spinal column like a necklace of coral
          head, trunk, legs and tail branching organisms, then into sand
         derms, crinoids, asteroids, and ophiur white, black, purple or variegated; their
          beam of life, daily coming and going makes the gases dance

.....

I am filled with a million voices, perhaps too many.
I am unsure of the century.
I am undead patter heading into the silverware.
I will be the Netherlands of space itself.
My ship of weights will bend matter and place burdens.
My headgear is moving into thatotherarea.
Come around the corner of the idea and make room for the cream bath.

.....

Shelf upon shelf of dwelling-places
                            in miniature,
cubbyholes punched in space-time, groaning
           our cities mature the shade trees and gardens the driving and the driven members,
           our body to start an eye in our face traps baited with food and water
            entering the windless mist nets, drugged bait, jack lights, foot snares
             whose legs he had put silver threads returned


                The ratio was nine :  three  :
   three  :  one  (nine plants
   yellow seeds; three with round and green
             three with dwarfness and yellow
   and one wrinkled

.....

                      Its bones soften, its flesh rots, spoken in revolution
with deeds to live by to this day--its skin falls off and death follows within


                       to the folklore of a body double he called his pineal door
                       in the dead of his first axis in the center of the ring I was powerless,


                       one last glance around and reentering his body back home
                       the girl of his projection of a magic wand--or a sledge hammer


               who and she quite properly held in a vise in my brain his family doctor
                              whereupon young to my toes and back to head, a great roaring oscillation

.....

Drum corners and through walls from every direction--


the half is now halved and halved again
him to the earth itself buffeted by stimuli
from the forces holding each individual
the very large size of even the smallest piece of material


seize pamphlets ink with wet
from between bricks cast by a light
from the sky brains
from the thoughts that control the weather
in your guts     in your cemeteries
and all the stumps which my tarnished marble was not born from

.....

    glamour, down to fur-trimmed pencil
     dumb show the electronic team now added
a throne room of earth
       the carved figure of a horse
          priceless blueprint to the vast electric
               whole warmth of the human voice and violins, the sound
           a revolving cylinder that plays them into a photoelectric gray in the picture


waiting metal arms of rooftop
 sharks whose mouths are under the head
  the spread of water hyacinth
designer's grip on women
the airship an oil-rig the laser beam a power station

.....

A clothesline of nanoblueberries
 flossing through the body ecstasy of
expert flesh of the near future
     hosed down in the labyrinth
  of the waiting who fidget with blanks
     electric information wristed away
  the tiles floors blazing queen blazers burning
polyester adrip on plastic creases
    hot metal rods long with melting hangers
  terroramory in aisles blazing with windows nudged out of the wood
  the fallen neon breaking up on a total slide of information
  fallen parkbench, sagging wire, rusted ballerina
       snagging a punctured form on seasonal tooth
   each rickety hero finds a piano bench
     sit simultaneous in the thunder
        of the mushroom cloud shadow master
      speech as long as a lizard's graze
          pineal cum trickling into his unibrow
             ask verbal wit eating balloons to imitate
          a water tank, put his ear up to the engine's flank
             watch his face erupt away in the resurgent light
       which tasted fences on its way
             and through his telephone and fish plans
           famished rapist of the nectar queen
          under the pool burlap against the rabbit rivers and diamond borders
        turning codes into lightning
                   liquid turn to configure coupling
               china broke like an egg's Neptune weight
     Oscar green Oscar blue cat's whiskers
             and winebottle drift on a mass, claws mind
           the think shanks of the doorway
                a clothesline of nanoberries
                ecstatic flesh of the near future

.....

    A leaper, in spite of herself, all that
kitten compact black and silver moving
         the universe scans, again and again,
                   until her silhouette is the movements of all trees
   the hypnosis of its sex the cage of a blind instant
                                            adorned with flowers and traces
                             entwined and widely,      with lips,
                               a leaper, not unblinking the
                                  soft territory of life


    (open)

.....

    When the bubble casts off
              a god's clump of houses
           and sea graphs turn to hard land
                 under the sadness of the young
               early burning or the icicle
                       stalagmite of pure eyes
                      from the ceiling of oh fuck
                           to the floor of the fathomless


imp's voice depths of book without sugar
           imp's depths of book in a quiet night
             and the big nothing nodding
                        with all teeming it's gathered
                               dynamited channels of determined tar
                           wet alleys dripping a railroad of fire escapes
--heeding curvature, and motionful--neverwavering:
                     taller than hell trees

.....

The song is telling me I walked past the lights and they said nothing.
A hideous roadmap of blue veins.
The energy of radio is broken by an ahistorical crinkle.
The whole subway station of burnt nerve was already there.
You're telling me that the song is a sword between us auto side-by side,
that it shows you a directionless taper.
That the slipping lines never collide with reality.
That these seatbelts are bungee cords
that nothing can throw us loose without bringing us back.
The vacation in a blue jet landed on a salt slab airway,
led to this engine
itself tailing.

.....

A freckled mass
a ship of whirring tigers
nine tenths of the law
an atom of Sunday
four lashes for the separated creature
can-opening the soul's alarm
clock of all evaporated fantasies
to the toppling moment
when the river eats numbers and paint
when the missionaries are murdered by other missionaries
I will be staring from a small broken library
smiling from the niche of my hell
with my hands on the secret skeleton of a calorie bible

.....

 love billowing through time
                          catching an imprint
      here              there
                here
planetarium of streaks
                 an orbit paints past
       and the halved units speaking
            to jumping rice, and a field
             the blanket of life unfolded
                                         in a dying sun
  ecstatic the leaden slow rhythm
          sex muzzled in winter's breaker
             and the dawning of twilight gas
                  on the perimeter hills

......

 From the pit               washing away


        rock that walled it in cast cool shadows, and polished to a satin
                     ivy on drainpipe plasma drips into the tubules
        blood of the bull, the follower of brackets for handrail mould


                                                                    These light rays the water unfurls
                                                                     nothing shall bar the lesser part words are
                                                                     or reaping angels who shall come to distort
                                                                     shall carry


 The river, trout are active all through the geyser area
          a hammer, pitons, spring clips nylon tape


        As the day ends we have never been able to photograph
                                gulls flock close to catch their evening

.....

 pinning machine power by waterwheel
           black blight over
               spread a reekin
      drink its blood the lion in a place of honor


        The sharp-shinned last uninhabited regions where man could
              wherever there was coal to heat the boilers
    his larger brother seized it and tore it away from the crows


           Blood rites have remained drunk either fresh or
                     drought or nomadic migration


                     less than half the cost of horses for the same work


           with faith, philosophy and mystery people drank blood to gain


          black-and-yellow Rocket, winner of the sensational power of cotton
                   from the clockmaker from a barkeep friend


         Their smokestacks and slums their steam engines
                 pastoral streams and financial help

.....

 A drip in the lower kitchen
  waterworks of a newworld
   falling through every papered wall
    to the void flowers medicine of daylight on the rubber lots
     flash mob of forgotten orgasms
      a cliff-face climbed by magnetic paint
       studio of the half-convinced   with authoritative poses
        nude in the wax collaborative
         hair pouring with crinkles of white light
          high shelves of identical pillows
           in a bookless dream
            orgy of pasta touching pasta in a sonic rivulet
             stems spurt on the background sky
              the sheen of a photograph   disrupted by fiery existence
               lips on a thump-tip fawning
                narcissus in the side mirror
                 beard taped to the windshield
                  the volley of separate elevator sounds
                   and the organs all snoring internally
                    rounding the twin sparks of faint existence
                     in a figure eight the twice-pierced omega
                      to vaguely respectable figures
                       I was a molten recital in your parlors
                        slouched on a stool dislodging  your little cities
                         your glass conversations   and in the morning
                          I walked scorched alleys and observed
                           bright black tar in yellow truck beds wet
                            vivid poison   agent of nothing in particular
                             I sent myself out.

.....

She has a machine that heals with sound.
I vibrate from brainpan to tailbone to feet's arches on the linoleum.
And it takes me to hospitals in a gentle future,
rooms where leaves rattle harmlessly against the glass walls
and the furniture rustles like a living creature.
Error is elsewhere, in the mansion of fading lovers.
My head comes off like a concrete pebble.

SANCTUM SANCTRECTUM

The soul is cutting garlic into imperfect rhombuses.
A painted ceiling is lower than before.
The knife has survived, stereo speakers are making
footnotes on a manuscript in the basement.
The soul is the body once it's learned to count.
The soul is a complication of breathing.


An alien within an alien, on a familiar globe,
with a triangular headdress, that one lunar world
heats with a numbing thought.
The soul is a sarcastic priest,
with only two pairs of shoes.


In the salted territories, squirming
on more than one bed-memory,
more than one bath.
The soul is related to math.


A ceiling with hieroglyphs is extending
into the walls.
An apartment is built from a smaller flame.
A mortgage is a bonfire
a house is a pyre for the senses.


You pay for death hotly, you pay for death coldly,
large birds and small snails are making noise.
The churches are closed, the museums are open,
the bars are explored to the bathrooms,
the soul has no schedule
and advances.