In the attic trying

to decipher the great book

he shot himself through the mattress,

traced in luminescence

from the neon signs.

There was no answer from the void,

no croak of hinges.

Dreams filtered through

the violation of consciousness,

the turbid mutation

of answered prayers.

I'm so glad to be beneath

the weight of your shit.

I see the platform cracking,

the glad green light.

The serpents are shedding maps,

the undergrowth prowls

with its own tongue foot.

Sanctuary is in

the severed umbilical.

Aisles cool with vacancy are

filing outward from

the buckled sun.

We could walk there

but we wouldn't.  We will

drip down the charcoal cliff face

like veins.  There will be

no lasting pain.

Flesh translated into steam

out on the shoreline

where the scarecrows lean

swerving lines that fly kites

under purple atmosphere

boundaries fleecing flowers

from the fabric hold

of cement fences

coal running from around the eyes

a manic fate designed.

Born to roam unholy Earth

from the time beginning,

in a ball of hair,

lost in the high

cemetery of the wind,

a bench of stone to sit up there,

somehow.

Growing to love the languor

of death on the prowl in suede

alert to the tongues of midnight

feeling their fade retract dreams

forms coalesce on the curtains.

Climbing hills that ripple

where the guardrails

are chains of gold

where the eye-holes

in the mask of clouds

are beautifully unoccupied

my life takes place between

two blood orange bookends

rolling roads of tar

among the vines and trees

my sacred light bulbs

and laughing skulls

change color in an instant

with my dancing blood

all alien mercies

far flung rejected loves

and rings of crooked rocks

adorn my frozen whirlpool

all the feathers of plastic birds

that the sun spat out in June

are living in December's moon.

In rags of daylight

I feel the strength of dead tribes

all alive in me.

The private glory

of the persecuted,

the lovely falls of every

one inevitable and great

thrillingly call out my name.

In the sanctum of the dark,

the shaken snapshot of another hour

passed walking

in long halls of outdoor space,

crucified in unison

with the many thousand things

humming, engines of milk tubes

and massive driveways abandoned

stones that once were marked

and now are worn.

Frustrated emanations from the crypt

long autumns in a frozen cone

watching orange fire descend

on the brown land

and lightning flow like bugs

over a screen made of melted sand

and the bees locked into the field's edge

by a blaze of activity

hands moving like brushes

and brushes moving like hands

a texture from another land.

Now the act of creation is suffered

I can only go on alone.

Circuits replicate at the borders,

clouds ripple that have no feeling.

The tumult of lights over dark-lit water

centuries in a second

bronze doorways in space

the haze around a burning eye.

Forty years pretending

to a be a human

this cocoon is thin

and translucent

I've been drinking

the sun and moon

from a cascading sky.

Even the invisible dogma is bullshit.

Fronds sinew in the free air,

clouds are merciless, ferns and fecal

deer marks, the yield of clay

multiplying in error, a steel wall.

I built myself a new soul

and already it's corroded

the bitches of mercy

have left me here

dramatic masks adorn

the faces of kinetic water

panes of clay with electronic antlers

broadcasting all the glories of the damned

to the vortex of an empty room.

The beautiful spawn of hate

with all its ornate detail

ravishing the suffocating world

of law and order

giving gray flesh pink lungs

ink tipped porcupine spines

protruding from the veil of flesh

fangs closing like a ribcage

around a sullen fecal heart

bones tap dancing

on a cement swollen piano lid

top hat gone with tortured breezes

provoked into an erratic storm

planetary rings of painted fingernails

swirling from its ashen fart.

The hot green trees

and the half moon

my bored blood thinking of

disappearing branches

metallic inlets where the river eats

stacked dinner plates

like slime on a slab of thin mints

these benches are spectral bones

the edges of dark waters

are lapping at ancient ground

like a stabbed tongue in a ring of oil

I am the guardian of ways

that no longer exist.

I no longer pretend

to be an angel

or a demon.  

My life has taken on

the contours of a man.

It's not enough: it doesn't

need to be.  In the shells

of our mortality

some resonance

still persists.

And it surfaces

on waves of flowerets

somewhere beyond

comprehension.

These rulers, these

sweet and blinded faces,

all are void in potential eternity,

sent evaporating through

the sculpted fossils

where the masks are

wan and lean:

and only the grave is green.

The stars are hard and cold

in orbs of self destroying light

I'm everybody's prisoner and nobody's son

I have no companions and I yield to nothing

the escapes are razor thin but infinitely deep

they shine through the cracks in everything

betrayed by flowers and concrete

to the soundless banks

of another bleached world

come feel me twilight

cast your cutting shadows

into my mindless skin

cardboard trunks are crashing

into the soundstage scenery

let's sing while we kill each other

with sightless apathy

let's carve out a metal cap

with flashing forcefields

in the wound that sleeps and sleeps.

Into the decaying belly

I drive beauty as a spike with sparks

to burn away the flakes

of long diseased organs

in loving, sublime incineration

where lonely pillars

shiver into gold.

Quiet paths made secret

by rushing rivers

nude runs that ended

under a deep black rainbow

feet scratched by jagged roots

faces stained by the half-grilled

ribcage of the sun.

Can you hear the purple sound

 of the pouring

the pouring of alchemical branches

from the sifted heart of man

can you hear the pouring

of a thousand resurrected things

gushing into existence

with a raving roar.

I know that I'm a fool of bone

and melting flesh

upon a small tower of shit

I laugh frequently at the ripping gears

at the glitter of machine teeth

I have nothing left to say to the grass

or the molecules of soil it springs from

what a joy to burn inside these rings of gas

these ribbons of bright planetary trouble

decorating a beautifully smeared sky

reflected on ruined waters

that I drink with an electric cup

in the meat slab light of sunrise

selling cobwebs to plastic shufflers

goblets of grease to paper passerby

and a necklace of bullets and rancid tampons

to yours truly

because I'm so fucking real

and so fucking great

Bright feathers can hold up

the crushing weight of oblivion.

Silken hair beheld

enlightens the tongue.

Cool waters of mercy

invade the poet's turmoil

and give the cosmic visage

an atomic leer.

A grill of white fire edged red

with a wormhole background

lurking in the lake mouth

of a blue guitar marooned

on a polished wooden floor

bones trickling with time's

little appetizers

clear tables of melted sand.

Spirit is the destroyer

of cultural illusions

and it rises

when one stops listening

to the voices of human beings

as if they were God.

Satan crucified

more beautiful than ever--

nightfall gleams with dark radiance

like a greasy tool.

Guitar strings letting go

the dust of moths

old loves departing

with their seasons--

the subtle flame

lasts like a granite floor.