I was a rag thrown

into a polisher's bucket

I thought the world was immortal

and my life the key

such thoughts a rag can think

and while I am swirled around

in waxy suds

and taken on a tour of the stars

on the sides of my bucket

weight is descending to dance

on my disintegrating fibers

so let it be music

let it be the crest of a careless day

let it be a swing that wraps

around the pole

without losing its passenger

a caught criminal with fancy

spiritual ideas

shrugging off the storm-carved mountains

and the senseless sun

lips laughing at the center of nothing

Paving stones on bones of rye

nonsense rhymes that never die

the soft spot in machinery's vortex

polyrhythms that live

in reconstructed spine

paths flowing in cool lines across

a landscape of hyacinth madness

strewn with milky violins

fire circles on the vacant hulls

of fallen intergalactic ships

diabolical angelic prancing

in the eyes that vines grow

under magical duress

a pyramid's cone peak

up ahead in the land

of weightless harbors

five fingers from the sun

in a frigid harness

light's miles of unseen matter

hurt blood in a vise grip

plastic antler standing tall

at the entrance of a seamless hall.

Slashed lungs latching

onto a twisted heart

strangling the blood

with stale escaping air

long ruts bisecting ornate houses

with a miracle of mud,

with wings of white leather,

dressing rooms with shelves

of china masks

gutted by laser light, jagged glass

pushing at plastic shields,

void clashing with mechanical aspiration,

huge wheels of human bone and teeth

finally at rest.

Splinters of smashed armor

fumes of evaporating blood

from beyond oblivion

the rim of a cracked plate

glinting from an open door

knives hanging in rows

from the night's horizon

logs floating downstream

with the features of laughter

to the rings of a distorted place.

Solitude with cards of steel

pipes twisting the suckled headpiece

a beast driven out of the dark by winter

with a scrap of light torn on his face

giving passage to the bleeding of the air

flowing over orbs atremble and

the levitating slabs of distinguished sleep

unknown sisters and brothers of a lost root

cliffs winking with cherry couches

bones collecting on their cushions with jewels

all wrecked wings of a single body

stem raking an embroidery of scales

for a flower that failed.

Red threads of light

through gray clouds flashing

sockets pouring snakes of stone

forked tongues of a giant eyelash

planets push volcanic lakes

docks running over fragmented miles

oceans of sand that glow like oily fur

and the wind wrapped in unseen wings

the plinths of exposed foundations

scraped bare by an emptied

annihilating mind

capped poison sending filaments

of frenzied gold

in ransacked water

bubbling hallucinated tools.

Dusty arrows

lose their patina in bitter air,

flying over scented aisles.

As they land in green sod

they tremble til they're living bones,

their feathers become eagle wings

that unfurl dropping juniper berries.

A pressure washed porcelain demon

walks furrows of crushed bramble

across the bird song of ancient woods,

planets overlapping like discs of molasses

gashes deep in stone sleep

the trickle of inky pebbles

catching electric reflection

bronze heat of eager faces

awaiting the machinery of day.

The star within the star

pours its red milk of fire.

Shores recede from bathers

who are making love, their light

enters the water.

I see a whole ancient temple

at the bottom of my coffee cup.

It is not yet in ruins,

cornices shine like daggers,

altars in front of circular thrones

conjure faint electricity,

a blue fog wraps around

my crown of paper reborn as metal.

Soil is sweetened with feverish seed,

dripping from a dark valentine

skin jeweled by honeysuckle

and bronzed by a lunar beam.

The trees blown back rattle

like tinfoil and ripple like cream.

The map of happenings

is silent and distilled

inactive as an unobserved electron

all the roots in one fallen petal.

I walk back and forth

in a house of ice

trembling at the blades

of electrode rays

that come through the floorboards

casting all my dreams

upon the wall

taking me to ships

that cross the caverns of the earth

the soul speaks in old books

lost in the rhythm

of a classic record

all the tombs are turned inside out

a voice flies up like a flag

above the colored waves of sand

above the sheets of metallic paint

the ghost of my bones is in

these harvested hills

nestled in their question mark green

around their wearying waters

what flourish do we bring

to the dance floor of all erased rails

black lights on a blood blue door.

Curves of light breaking

on my body,

lifting me into the realm

of the remembered dead.

A sidewalk paved straight

through a celestial sky,

birds of sound without bodies

scattered from the throat of God.

To where the blade is speech,

and me in acid rain

the lonely remainder, bereft

of all companions in the glow

that our kind make of night.

What happened to my grace, my

sweetness, my love of people?

They were lost to a field of bones.

Lost to the glint of pearls before swine,

to a hot burglar within my blood,

to aisles laden with mirage

the shine of disinfected substance.

Drifting in mercury letters,

cursed by black sand

on the back of a battered dove.

Beads of worn ivory teeth

trickling over sheet mail gloves

and the milking of barren guts.

Glaze of daylight like a fist

above the green waters.

Vinyl moon above a cliff curve

all the fire this tongue deserves

poured down through nets

of hot galactic nerve

through piercing seeds and eggs of rain

veins dancing with a chill

sublime monstrosity

decked out in prophylactic frills.

I am always drawn into darkness

always with the diseased and dying

in their decay,

staggered by foggy lights from beyond

our far-off outskirts.

All agonized things with claws,

all feathered blades that turn,

long neon hallways

where an unfamiliar muse

goes looking backward,

docks of dashed boats and jagged

tongues of broken pottery

reels of time lashed

to a revolving door,

cracked souls that sing to the ceiling

of their common tomb.

What was I chasing through kingdoms of spirals

shimmering walls of glass that sing

lip-struck edges of stacked pages

canyons of metallic string in coiled rows

kisses that cracked paint

the flicker of electric eels

ticking from the buckets of the damned

and the rags that refine a highway

all resolved into a lucid shell.

Black soda in a fractured room

day dim through painted windows

I see the sea-scraped bubbles of light

that are aloft in evidence

I sweep myself away

with a redheaded eye

when all the deaths have not killed me

I will not be able to find

the chamber of solitude

having vomited my reptilian mask

on the silk-screened mountains

out of control through solar shafts

that bisect a circular door

and eject a worm god

allegiance to the ember

of a winning fraud

and a blade of restoring mercy

cuboid temples

to the dancing days of an electrode

frocked by a praying mantis strobe

the glory of souls that sail alone

hot playlist in a flying car

the grid's pulsating neon

void of sound

for a hot tub moment

marooned against these

puritan millennia, this sweetly waning

mirror of days.

Slabs of agony from past lives

all landing on the reconfigured vessel,

soap bubble eye of body

staring through the arrows of rain

in a flashing force field

scanning panes of light

sharpening bladed hands.

The light at the end of the tunnel

is a cemetery.  Rails of granite

run like a tape recorder.

The warmth over death

is a miracle.

Marble benches mirror

my falling bones.

Somebody's features laughing

are trapped within it,

the network formed

by leaning branches

is alive at work.

I love the smell of burning plastic in the morning.

The ridge glints with gold, it is not imaginary.

Beauties conceal themselves

in the fortress cliff face,

it goes deeper.

Caves lick at the earth with molten mouths

swallowing histories and armor

mystery strengthened by the horror of time.

My story lost in the overlapping

entanglements of man,

under a million distorted tales.

And for the beauty

for the chiming harmony

of all these discordant things

an eel nestled in an inkpot

webs of light bursting

from an old tobacco urn

the wineglass tipped empty

on a brick hearth

with no lips or fire left

metal rainbows from a bone cage

shelves of magnetic mercury

soul's layers lingering in place

yet wavering at the call

of a deeper fall.

A drop of blood blooming on ruin.

Five fingers for the torn

hand that counts down.

Ripples in the rock

that will not yield.

Ways left behind on earth

that carve through space.

Years growing deep and strange

porous with dreamlike exits

photos of italic wind

articulate without bones

moving in a lack of lungs and teeth

the taste of rails that guide the morning

and swords of plastic joke

that choke the night

cells weeping in another life

tongues brushing dusty stone

afloat on solid darkness

a peacock's fan of beds

and tousled heads

arrived along electric lines.

Looking back

over the list of my footprints

I see machine fragments,

long red threads tied

to radiant black arrows,

bones carrying obscure script,

photo book shaking in the robot hands

of this crooked cast-off piano,

tables talking to paper-draped walls,

knobs winding multicolored wires,

plastic sheets of numbers

that were zig zag souls

coalescing in these ragged rolls

moon's laser through a window of iron

glass gone to the tar of bronze

glaze ejected from high strung vapor

raging pine sap past the love of junk

and the maze above.