With a stranger's guitar

and a bus-long six-seater automobile,

purple as the wind

that brought him there.

Odilon Redon eye hovering

under the neon convenience sockets.

Scraped by with a rose tattoo.

Painted the alleyways, secondhand swag.

Profile voodoo.  Tentacle

hovering over dark waters,

Discreet notation, delivered

at the radio station.

Tin foil skeletons

with hats for handles

tracks for a swift lightning.

With a stranger's guitar

and the plush owl curtains,

and the smooth stones

of an abandoned fishtank

and a sunset for hours.

There's a liquid tiger

in my mercury eyes

bones writing on rice paper screens

with arterial tongues

ghosts drifting between transparent shelves

selecting shapes from dying dancers

the glowing trash that spells an ancient name

wires that tell where the lungs are hiding

ponds of jellied vapor

that keep the key in the flashing fog

stripes lashing like the beams

of the last raw god

claws climbing the ship side

of painted gold that glides

and has its own pinnacle's whistle

a mouth of folded wings

dripping like a question mark

on these shores of uncertain mercy

roaring at the sulfurous film

and the lunar dancers

growling for the vacant halls

and a spirit thirsting to be thirsty

drinking from a radiant wound

I drink acid from the sky

don't mind meandering

so long as it leads

to the blood volcano

something has exaggerated

your walk and your wallet

floors are open ever after

in the shine of your far-cast eyes

masked monsters in need of error

storm the graffiti

all is waffle iron walls

protein screaming and rushing

the sun with a flag

When autumn is a spaceship

hovering through space-shot corridors

light doubling back on itself

on the outskirts of a dream

when the edges of the bedcurtain

flicker over the sweat

of a living concrete floor

and the poor flowers

of a half-hatched sanctuary

meld and flex and fall

dim closets opening outward

toward radiant star fuel

a hovering galactic anchor

slab swimming with belly of lichens

over the underwater fires

and prairies of gelation eggs

longs strands of conscious green ribbons

a mercury sun

the myriad tongues of one plunge

recording hyperspatial hereafter

Hours poured over me like sand

I looked for the reflection of a knife

to cut the rooted song out of my heart

my hands were swarmed with crawling grains

the rattled speakers drowned

I regained a moonstruck surface

bones withdrew around me

from the solid light

torn flowers from my ribs

keys opening forbidden drawers

in a distant room.

I swim uncertainly in the alien air

of a lifted curse, trying to throw off

the bedraggled phantom,

the facelessness of oceanic days

revealing no pulsing center.

Paths flicker in the breeding woods

I watch the tails of feminine spirits

beckoning the races

of the happily damned

the fullness of unbroken trances

fried orchids in a distant dance.

She is the queen of these

square avenues, full jewel

ornate in a map made

by the grayest drones, shining alone.

I lurk around the painted pavements,

hoping for the kiss of her honeypot,

under the froth of noise

hungry for her cool poise

hot with her reflection

on my soul of glass, her superb ass.

I want to sow new arches

on these old foundations,

watch hallucinated stone

bow over open courtyards,

a garden paused

in trembling tranquility

for the black doves of her feet

flowers showered on the dead street

music pulsing from captured cicadas.

She is the fount of sacred lips,

her name is shaded.

The lid of time yearns upward

like a wet curtain

from her screen of eyes

to scan my frame into the fire of days

flowing down the cloth of mountainsides

I drink from her smoky thighs

in the crossing of hawk shadows

like a healing wound

hatched bright beneath

a bubblegum umbrella.

The blue stem crashes through

the eighth angel of my mind

on a glazed rooftop, in an empty

coffee shop cleared for my dream,

ink blurred of the pages turning.

Kisses turned aside that turn

to soggy bricks and land

in a ragged wall.

All my renegade companions

are gone, the silk remainder

of a sowing machine ship

that plowed through the side

of the main road and

into the purple water

flickers in twilight and dawn

expressionless as a pawn

the departure is mostly invisible.

My claws on this cliff's dried root

reaching for dirt in air

my breath and the breath of the ages

just barely taking turns

as the old world melts into steam below

and dancing throngs are covered

in waves of red clay

with traces of iron

there's a cinema of bones

hysteria within the cloistered glow

of pipes pushing water

the cage that speaks with one voice

far from the feline choice

of nobody's passenger

memorizing wind and rain

the luxuries of chosen pain.

Cheap apartment jewels

chain links emerging

in the layers of red gas

descending Jupiter's robes

in an orb of entranced anti-gravity

playpens for the bones of outcast souls

soaring over vine-broken equipment

cells and their lust for water

pythons gulping eggs

where wet wings languish

lines gone jagged

on a quake broken highway

tar dripping way to land

retaken by trees

long lanes of dappled ground

evaporating speech

nights and their hunger

on sleep bag benches

scraped nights of a light bulb moon

This pale moth eaten planet

still has a few twilight sparks

the menacing threshold is a string that plays

with my rubber clad metallic skeleton

I will take Cloud Springs Road

through the bliss of hellfire

I am the snake on the stick

unfurled eternally

this mateless abandon is the painter's wheel

these seeds that glint like bullets

are a message unknown

the itchings of this vast and fractured womb

the bump of hills in a tiny mirror

heaps of gravel radiant in neglect

poles aslant above electric wreckage

the tongue erected from a sleeping tongue

a pearl of many seas

hacked veil flashing from world to world

seams bleeding screen printed fireworks

the blade's edge in a swarming iris

notching the umbilical spine

Bitter worm of consciousness

see the streetlight flowers

let go of the planet skin.

Ghostly vapors dancing

on a wooden glove

three stories high

stuck to a melted hill

chains of daylight and black

feathers of night gone.

Cartoon lips breathing

from the flicking of an ancient film

desk lamps ticking with tender mercy

of solitude's divine

and nameless wish alive

in long blue flame

the threads of an untouchable climb.

Summer is leaving me softly

gray clouds shattered by sun

are distilled in glass

five nets of oysters flying through the air

break on the prow of an iron dream

with rising portholes

crowned with frozen steam

overlooking a silk mattress

of cooling foam and flashing flowers

on the borders between teeming worlds

your singing mouth a chrism

where I go to be gently scarred

soft arms in a shark's tooth necklace

baptism in undeterred blood

wide shores of interlocking lights

moon shine on turtle shells

and pelts of deer

songs climb down the chasm

of these weapon walls

where the sacred oil falls

like hesitant water

unbound in your tumbleweed

of bending rhythm

may the basins of bright time

release and shine

autumn's height of departure

with a thimble on a crimson crest

tipping slightly over.

Grapes fresh from the vine

crushed against the frame

of days anointed by

a multitude of tongues,

fronds from the cliff of green

that elevates my vertebrae

through encircling black hair,

up through the clouds that speak

and the clouds

that become searching limbs,

wetness of days on the wane

that emit a twilight shimmer

by guardrails of some activating

words that are always missing

from the passage of wings

over lonely courtyards,

each of my ears is a bird skeleton,

I go to the ships of bronze

shifting interspatial tablets,

I go to the arms of her earth

who moved the broomsticks

and the waving hands,

I go to her turning over

buckets of clean linen

as I run in dreams,

I go to her tub of mercy

as an ancient spirit anxious

to shed the solitude of flesh

and wield her hands on me

like a waiting sign

and a flower from the howling grave.

Paths are carving through the coils

of deep wet woods

swamp's fever of vine flowers

reaching through metal fences

and floating bones

the cursive link

between times is formed

of melted gold among dancing blades

love made on a sandstone bridge

in wreaths of criminal twilight

for those who resist a common death

and ride a fiery saddle

through a lunar escape

the knuckles of deific fingers

popping like bombs

my hiding place of intertwining tendrils

emits a pained antenna

to a wrecked world where

one glowing siren

imperturbably cooks the air

with rivers and waterfalls of dark

dark hair and purifying stare.

If there are still mermaids singing,

if my feet will float above the ground

to take me to my ship of angles,

if the veins of leaves

blowing in a purple wind

will turn me into articulate smoke,

maybe the rocks will speak for themselves

and pour like concrete,

maybe rivulets of hot ink

will bisect the raging sun and suck me in,

maybe the ground will sin with me

against the dying day

and stringy devils live again

in my swooping songs.

Maybe the walls will blow like wands

and the museum of ice

become a lasting bronze.

Your beauty is heavenly.

Out here in the circling driveway,

I sweep up the shattered mirrors,

I long for your face behind

clear unbroken glass, the cruel

engines hum around us.

What do I know of heavenly beauty

in your feline form?  All I know

is a series of desperate dreams,

each with a succulent imprint

and a sweetly wounding name.

Let me in to your dipped darkness

and the brine of your planetary fulcrum

that men and mobiles and beaten buildings

fly past as your delicious orbit increases--

vivid daughter of earth, send me the days

of your smile and your strut

across foot-blessed floors.

Wild nights are gone

beneath a floodlit scene of funerals

for nameless dead dancing on film

I encounter empty fields

spilled popcorn on green grass

old fashioned techno music

in my rerun dreams

we ran from party to party

on crooked country roads

with neon platform islands

where our timely incantations

were repeated and understood

those times have been blown to hell now

and maybe they never happened

I was laughing on a sex drenched

fire escape walkway

black ladders pulled up from the street

like leather belts or some unseen photo reel

in those pictures I am dying in slow motion

I've got a notion the fireworks are all exploded

and I'm alone at the bar and the bar is abandoned 

deep in some night that never arrived

I pause to drink a flashing flask

of disappearing water

and write this on polished wood

that's going dull beneath the curling paper

Hills grow from the ripples of the earth

stems in a torn mouth

beckon to vivid clouds

for dark oceanic weeping and

pierced pillars with viaduct roots

radiating torn concert posters

myriad tongues of dirty mercy

the moss floors of flowing cool canals

sag to the curb and watch

cranes lifting elegant gutters

feel my poor fingers

on the length of your multiplying spine

sip the soda of eloquent corpses

distilled to the roil of their final songs

the river through the graveyard

is long with many turnings and

the glint of many fragrant metals

heat of somber lips where an eclipse

boils and runs

the sun drips radio error

two notes for a high-strung ton

this risen clump of rabbit bones

and reptilian dung

stretched wide with violin eyes

where the moon is a wire hanger

and a singing black hole is hung

Let the light frost of December

write its prayers into a higher ground,

may the empty heights

reflect the mirror of the heavens

clouds of blue and skies of yellow dust

the shine of an unshared park bench

rails of granite up against

the swollen pond's frozen beach

the reach of jagged paths

diamond eyed owls

in the hard fought woods

footprints of marble radiance

along the glowing green intertwined

of falling and rising trees

in sheaths of erotic moss

bright city's distant glaze

an ice bouquet of water torches

frayed rind of its light

on insistent gray

as the tracks to eternity fade

under the dome of days.