Once in a dream of wider skies

I knew hills of needles

long dry from trees that were gone

and cones without seeds that crackled

with vibration of the last faint music

in the shade of a crooked concrete tower

escaped from the series of seismic ripples

my love and her electric memories

undressing on the sands above buried sidewalks

told me to rewind the lost tape and laughed

let's fly above the string where we sang

above the land of unprinted wars

where there is no flying

let's ride the burn of one

more fast eroding pattern

come drink the mist as if it was mosaic

unblast the desolate art of desolate hands.

NO AVATAR

These things are in my presage, and myself

Am part of them and know not; but in dreams

The gods are heavy on me, and all the fates

Shed fire across my eyelids mixed with night,

And burn me blind...

                                   -- Swinburne

Just as once I pecked at my

Promethean liver

and now I leave it alone

some day I will stop using these teeth

to scar my lips of sage

and sharpen them to bite the cord of time

just as I am the hermaphrodite

who remains in spirit and refuses

to manifest in flesh

so the saints of death make eternal war

on the demons of life

just as my father's name was Michael

and mine is Lucifer

Satan is getting tired of

the philistine archangel's knee on his neck

so I will rise bearded like bees on honey

to uppercut the clean shaven angel

toward his artificial heaven

and forged from fire rise from hell again

just as witches don't control the weather

and the pious pray

their prayers of impotent frustration

so I come like incense with the ax

that is my singing friend

in a cone of upside down light

I watch butterflies with plastic eyes

I rewire the hot bronze mystery

and collage around the core

of the symbols that are never at rest

I am the ass ridden by many messiahs

some think me mute but I am only eating

just as I stopped smoking

and now I rest in a photograph

of frozen fire

just as you got all the names wrong

I trick fate in many masks

to be born naked in distilled frenzy

drumming placenta and thriving in triplicate zen.

The flesh of dancing bones

distinguished by fire

finds a colorful cranny to die in

places organs that sing

on a counter-harmonic altar

and with a grin torn into the heart

falls down like a dead sex organ

into the infertile abyss.

Mountains cracked by steam

and reeking lava

fleeced of trees

and the flight of the living

invite the attachment

of Martian forests

amphibian eyes of cruel

elongated giants

grafted serpents

and the baby shit

of dying angels

wax teeth of encrusted books.

If one should turn with gentle eyes

to sweetly perceive the extent

of the homogenous terror

that one will be wasted away

not by a bomb or a crucifix

not by a series of guns

or a tightening noose

but by the limpness

of a sleeping herd.

To harden against it is to break

to surrender is to be suffocated

the way to ascension is blocked

by divine stupidity

this is the wrong world

and you are the wrong rebel

might as well eat tar in flake form

for breakfast cereal

might as well drink reptilian milk

for gasoline.

Orchids forcing through the eyes

the thrill of diabolical water

poison roots in poison soil

branches of elongated flesh

hissing with toothy hysteria

barren lands stricken

with diseased blood.

Slashed costumes of rancid cloth

birthing latex replicas

chains of rubber dolls bathed

in radiant liquid shit

repeating robot harmonies

in obedient recital

the rust of metal wings

peppering a planetary

volcanic throat.

Plastic idols melting into rings

of toxic flowers

ponds of mechanical piss

eating antique bones.

Cracked sky proclaims electricity

fronds gush from split stems

green sap of violent life

paths of radiant lava

curling malignant steam.

Figures pushed through mud

animated bronze and marble

peacock dresses flouncing

from the frolic of manic nymphs

on a dwarf god's limbs

the panic of dark blood in silver water

an altar of seductive steel.

Deep knotted brains of ice

drowning in baths of mercury

red ferns atremble

in vines like a raging river

sinews dancing for a death drunk moon.

Delirious days

fade into the kaleidoscopic spectrum

drums that waft like leaves

bikini snapping on beer fed blankets

wet stone blinking in a cloud brushed sun.

I lean back on a bench

to watch my ghost turn corners

the machine of a cruel afternoon

conveyor belt souls.

Light comes from broken places

to be corrupted

the stained cloth and the shadow

to carve out our melee

the blades of these fragments are enough

and as beauty comes forth from death

so my hours bloom.

My days are ghostly bulbs that float

through the pulsings of

thick veiled afternoons

in the tide of stones

I'm a turning utensil

in dreams of dripping light

I fly above painted roads

watching tunnels dug up

turn slow machine somersaults

men's bodies tied to churning clocks

and women folding chloroform cloths.

In the cracks between ransacked calendars,

in the pools left behind by receding darkness,

I trim hedges that hold fortress doors,

I pile up hordes of spirit-tongued vitamins,

I watch the fan blades articulate

unceasing circles, in tubs of zinc tubes

I rinse the blood of brakes

on dawn's awareness,

I swing the chains with vacant hooks

for all the puppets who are gone.

Branded by the brightest blades

goblet brain dripping with

nuclear paint on the patios

of smoke-linked cafes,

the lipstick-smeared kisses

on cracked brick porches,

high ladders with Buddhist banners

trailing off into the talk

of an abandoned night.

Vines crawling concrete canyons,

birds clacking in the iron ribs

of a snaking overpass

footsteps of the lonely

on an egg-stained cemetery ridge.

Trembling walls of painted grates

wherein the gnashing teeth make song

strings of fire and dripping tongues

lashing at the cloud-soaked sermons of grease

from bearded waifs with poor faces

eyes of solid red in turmoil's flesh

the flying bones and brain

of the distinctly human.

Spiral staircases into empty air

glint like frozen milk

and separate the thunder

of a great thaw

bright kisses of burning lips

upon marbled brows,

thin waves of the dying voices

that tried a caught raindrop

of spiritually illegal color,

faint droppings on the page that flipped

for the pulse of a glowing cellar

to grow throne shroom cathedrals

with vortexes spiced and leaded

the upthrust of breathing stones.

Dog face scowling

a grizzled walker

drops envelopes of burning

heavenly light

to anoint the winding tar

a denim dancer

in a globe of floating wheels

gears grinding that kiss the lips

of faded immortals

offshoots eating gravel

and spitting out pearls

guardrails sparking with satanic beauty

the flick of a frenzied painter's brush

the order of fractal chaos

bronze wings capturing the eye

a tail of poisonous mercy

head sown back on

fresh from the chopping block

bright tongues from the injured neck

developing backup singers

and hot electric singing axes

a tin of baked saliva

encrusted in an ancient mouth.

CHICO MALO

Forelock of a snake

guarding pineal prescience,

slabs of scriptural weight

farting ink through bright

fractured tectonic plates,

head covered with the blood

of hovering angels,

the support of terrible

reptilian columns

roaring underneath

his rattled bones.

Gas tank of the infinite

cut off and burning by a thread,

these helmets of misguided mercy

falling off like wool.

He licks the bridge with a long

recording tongue

and the glue of spit becomes

veined radiant insignia.

Satan represents courage,

cunning and genius.

Satan represents humanity,

the fountainhead of humanism.

Satan stands for revolution

against tyranny, against

meek mediocrity.

Satan stands for the sexy flame

set against the void.

His downside

is the downside of everything

imploding into raw space

like an ecstatic dancer.

His voice is the voice of Bob Dylan,

cawing into eternity.

His face is the face of Arthur Rimbaud,

James Baldwin, Garcia Lorca.

His face is the face of Abraham Lincoln

glinting from a fresh penny.

He wrote the Constitution

in the name of a distant God.

In the egg of an inspired twilight,

in all the amphibian details

of a looming fog.

Fur of light on heavy clouds

the power of the wind in harness

pushing me higher.

Poles linked by talking wires

running spirits from valley to valley

an alphabet of signs in water

sand in the fingerprints

glinting from contact

with so many lands.

Drums in radiant circles

heat that eats the rain

before it hits the ground

two nude encircled shadows.

Lanes of the never before

explored

opening many

vacant heavens and howling hells.

Deep sunrises yet to come

don't hover in the deep forest

Earth comes to them in space

by fertile movement

turning frost to disappearing tendrils

in the orbit that knows no vacancy

bright galaxies like rolling water

the paint of long dead stars.

In the shade of the eclipse

I gather my fallen arrows

and dip them in a river

of melted gold.

Cracks in the sleeve

of earthly daylight

pouring through

ancient space.

I drop my fork and spoon

my bones of ink

this body of vagrant water

ten tons of concrete runways

and the cloak of sweet grass

I wore while the days grew frantic

cells of time

departing webs of vibrant roads

through a rain of bright wet smoke

dust walker's

magnetic glasses.

Beads of blood

on fans of ruddy quills

attach to hairs of death

and then fly off

like unstable bullets.

Here in the orbit's

gray scorched basin

scrape me out with tongues

send me around

the acres of Saturn's rings

improbably take me home.

Stone wheels of the way that goes,

trees moaning on a crust of earth,

islands floating in hot blue air,

cream-puff islands with neon signs,

strings of light leading

to the heart of the ancient forest,

cloth stained from an interior world

drying in the ice of dawn.

Plastic cabins overturned

with an array of ribbons

coursing through violet roots.

Keys dangling from a torn branch

hinge of a half open door

from dusk to hurt yearning dusk.

Shelves of sky

with sherbert color

to be wasted upon,

glass flashing false memories

to a drainpipe altar,

lines of suggestive coal

tracing goddess outlines

on the straw mat of a primitive

with books in a wooden tower

and music in plastic flasks.

If the corpse of my father

could speak with a true tongue,

if the purple waves

of a schizoid December

could accumulate backwards

into dappled fall

and stone crown the ivory roots

of tall black flowers

to an everlasting pall

of womb song blue

each torch's comma flouncing

in a geometric void

each alloy of the night

solar flares that attach

to the radio suture

stitching tombs together

with a future tone for time alone

in ancient cherry

concrete claws would abound

in gilt framed mirrors

moon lit clamor of water

wound like spools of taffy

together on a branch

of suspended metallic rain.

Planks I walked to portals

radiant with hot

fringes of other worlds,

the eyes in these old feet

dazzled, the water

of these old eyes

twinkling with

infant hands.

Shining with

hard beaten grain,

stretching to the last rebirth

and bending back

to sun on dented homes

cool beds of fresh

kaleidoscopic lettuce.

I was born to be a demon,

I am always the bad one.

Lamps flicker in the lairs

that I pass as my shadow

interrupts the thought patterns

of the inhabitants.

What is this antiseptic cave

where I was born?  The ground

is an ooze from some

concrete underground,

the trees and their leaves of paper

jitter vividly like agitated souls.

Gold coils in my eyes, liquid gold

from the mouth of the deceiver.

God has given me a great immune system

to curse my enemies with,

I commence with my leathery spear

and my knives of stars.