The gates of gauze

in a beam of purple light

a boomerang of knives

that reflects in returning eyes

kingdoms of salt towers

fractured by a breeze of dreaming bones

aloft in taut machinery

all drunk on the mouths in their foreheads

peaks lost in propeller speech

betraying boiled blood

what wings of water surfaced

from that burnished lake

below the burning battle that became

a vampiric myth

beseeched by souls of molten caverns

to fly through zones without mercy

the way the births of angel's curses

take a blistered course.

Empty lots hold unimpeded light

ferns flutter at the outskirts

of paved earth and pale antennae

nets shimmering in wounded air

breasts pouring from a tall

flatscreen sky

amused lips laughing in infinity

the strings of the ax that tugs

through flesh like milk

the killer's kiss of antimatter ceilings

doors drifting from a dispersing ship

each thoughtful fragment taught

inert metallic resistance

stems caught in the machinery of time

and blooming from such painless

undistracted heat

ten thousand petals

from a rotten clump of wheat

in a clay hand

a void moon sifting

through the sun's demands.

The narratives have all run out,

the light plays in many directions.

The torments of a god

split into slick pieces

and ornamental garbage.

Lines going wavy at the hem

of a great silence, that stretches

yawning through the veil of emptiness

to a field of fertile stars

fallen on blue soil

far past the manmade zones

of territorial ooze.

I shrink into the smallest molecule

and lay down naked on the pages

of a honored book.

The letters cook my guts

and my bones fall out.

Horizons pour gold and sauerkraut

onto the plate of my grave.

My tongue grows longer

than these high electrical wires.

It burrows through the earth

then out into the home of space.

The tick and the moth

in the toilet bowl

the wounds they cause in matter

before the swirl descends

a labyrinth in a lion's mouth

screens blaring over selected highways

southern ruts erupting to the frigid north

the fruits of many canyons

in their tentacled sheen

places of dreaming rest

that undulate like oceans

leaves of a stained map

gathering in darkly gleaming piles

eyes of the night that have

an inner light like nuclear arms

spirits that haunt a certain architecture

bone tables holding granite wings

above the pipes that sing.

The glorious tree

is dropping its appendages.

The trunk soars into space

shedding bark of parchment paper

leaving twigs like tortured jewels

on the turning ground.

There's a portal halfway up

pushing light from the other side of death.

There's a torn vessel

within the strange vehicle

that breathes for uncaptured soul.

Fired past the sun, growing

branches again, roots outlined

across rancid moons, giant

planets of lifelessness

caressed by its crooked orbit

offering no settlement, no

orchard of companions

to the supernatural night

or the rings of many clustered dawns.

Only blood can produce life.

This mangled carcass still wants more.

In the overlapping skies

of twin planetary landscapes,

in the dying of the clocks

that monitor their own death,

in the gently lapping waves

of molten metal,

in the sanctuary ripped and strafed

I no longer sit to wait for anyone.

The drummers and their puppet prancers

have all moved on to another square.

Lines run outward until they wrap around

the bulb of a cracked dawn.

The roads are freed of meaning

at the sea.  Far off in fog,

under the spell of an uncanny distance,

minerals go to work on human minds

and the suicide of this

counterfeit chronology is decided.

Fountains running for a ghostly inhabitant.

Lunar utensils enmeshed in thinking vertebrae.

Balloon strings letting go of a weightless hand.

I feel the joy of Satan

as I search the dumpster for beauties.

A convex sky is blinking at me.

Far up, in the creamless depths,

there must be a strange wheel turning.

I'm a soldier in nobody's army

turning to salute the scalding sun.

The chain of days goes

further and further.

I am with it in the hook

that breaks rugged stone.

The web of roots is dredged up

from under this pale blue skin

of dry tar.  Earth is deeper than air

and wilder.  I am her demon

of many ages, some swampland singer.

I'm the deity's forgotten finger

watching trash of time.

A lifeform that angelically erases itself

is hovering above the bent and weathered trees

investing seeds of flame

in tiny unknown particles

flapping in the dark microscopic

parallelogram of intertwined tongues

shores tapped by oily hooves

beneath its dreamed escape

from grim activated bodies

and their placards wet

with diabolic phlegm

eyes lost to the event

and gone from the essence.

On a pomegranate picnic

with a friendly ghost

cracking red cells into dishes

that disintegrate in the sun

and the blanket spreads like sand

over pine needle carpets

and oil splattered clearings

where the suffering green

is a touch of inward fire

clouds of plastic bags

rub along our backs

we crawl to read the clay

in fertile ditches

and the peels fall away

from daylit sculpture

lichens glowing on the shepherd's

wall of stone

and the shepherd's gone.

BASEMENT DWELLER

My crypt of painted figures

and forbidden epiphanies

souls bereft of destiny

limbs breaking in a waterfall of light

the lowest deck of mutilated time

shadow of unknown sacrifice

orb shackled to a weary spine

that knows the green blood

of many flowers

ripping through the craters

with a fissure hand.

Ethereal growth

of disembodied desire

clawing back from a fallen moon

buried here in a plaster womb.

There is a mercy cast

from these unreal windows

constructed on the lining of a cave

where angels don't behave

and mortal flesh ascends in baskets

flags of a fallen dome

where silence has a wand to ask it.

On this moon bright southern night

the sky is blown open for me to fly through

magnolia leaves rustle in their shine

on the brine of the earth and its dreams

under the fiction of my floating feet

and the shine is deadly as a storm

fiends that roam in the approach to silence

feel it shatter their veins

and freeze the mercury in their kneecaps

my pentagram princess

rides the wall of dawn

in a shawl of dark matter

and a wig of forgery in tatters

watching me obey the tides of blood

with slug like eyes in my skin disguise

I'm playing with the virtues of the dead

and the vices of the living

the statues are kidding

and grime has become stone

my projections and I walk alone.

Strings trilling in the canopy of fire

roads threading like

veins to swampland's pain

caves radiant in rows

in wind stroked hillsides

cemetery gardens rising

in a cojoined coil

above the end of stricken toil

chains of dictation swinging

from these icicles of thought

that found a rushing body

dancing on the roots that writhe

in a fretless tide.

I don't like context or meaning

I like shapes and colors

suggestive forms sliding

over the barriers between worlds

but maps are needed to find honey

the cage is many beveled octagons

of organized voices

linked in an ascending chain

red misted clouds of alphabet time

the reach of sleep stretches

to touch the ocean floor of a galactic pan

a vast lair of being like a scriptural napkin

in the middle of a pile of napkins

or maybe somewhere off to the side of genesis

with the kisses of a girl's name

a key to my story would be so futile

it is now in many rooms and many layers

thank God for the meaninglessness of life

for its lack of destination

and the flair of its shared chairs

leaning to the exit's a palatial house

I want to escape through a curtain of acid

to dry caves of gold framed polished emeralds

like reptilian eyes, lakefront cabins with porches

overlooking biological storms

and abandoned golf courses underwater,

corroding into coral basins

symphonies kissing a commercial sky

feathered costumes that call in the snakes

the cotton hands of swift ethereal machinery

taking turns with our octopus soul

in the germ of a cooling light

afloat beneath the dangling planets

and long lost stars

to sleep on the grains of the dark

and come awake before an electronic door

watching brick floors fade

in mercury and water

and cells move morphing in sad ladders

red knowledge in roving screens

dead to the centuries

aloft on wings of deathly temporal power

this terminal hour.

A searing white hot flame

from the grave, accompanied by money.

You're selling yourself to yourself,

and even you aren't buying it.

The mirror is a shit stain

glimmering in the underwear

of your robotic God,

where you dwell in metallic folds

with your hologram friends.

In the real world there's nothing left.

No dream of reality to return to.

Your box is fucked, you built it.

Climb into it anyway and begin

the sleep of death.

Let the fronds of mutated plants

poke at you on the way in.

From the world of disease

you left behind, from a

suicide bomb of raunchy exuberance.

It's hard to talk when your whole body is

filled with liquid shit.  Fucking drown in it.

SKOMOROKH

I walked into a timeless landscape

looking for drugs.

I'll flip onstage all night

to keep the light coming

out of my ribcage.

I'll eat coins

and turn them into flowers.

People gather like fences of meat

to watch me prancing.

Strings pop in the fancy abattoir.

The gap between me and the audience

is a moat full of guts.

Rainbows attach the edges

through a ceiling of stained glass.

Doorways open to blank space

in the upper corners.

My blood is laughing

at its cage of shit

the basement floor reverberates

with the root of many feeding engines

and the dragon is a plastic tool.

Fierce letters printed on wilting skin,

a glaze of blood to polish timber

and take down the skies,

hands clasped on the disc

of an airport dining table,

zones of ordered paint

rushing sentient space,

I can't talk, I must stare

into the voidless yawn that crackles,

I must know its unforced embrace

where the parched ground heals

and wounds with wetness,

bridges cross the chasm's

multicolored light,

my delicious torment redeems

the tragedy of my elders,

I see wings in shit, the corpus

emblazoned with frauds

that have become genetic,

the stones go quiet

in their slow decay,

the water wades into me,

I am a sea invaded

by this unwelcome body,

the eye is all, the poles of vision

are making shapes from a hell

of elaborate echoes,

the sun cools on waning rye

my wallet is a folded leaf

that holds a supernatural seal,

the gash of a gone root waits

my feet are numb to finding

the sleep of mercy ends in ecstatic birth.

QUIXOTIC

All my life I'll just be a fool.

I'll fuck it up, probably on purpose.

Murders will happen because of me

but I'll never be there.  This

is the paranoid eye that searches

only for a certain frog.

This is our earthly home,

that leaks and screams.

I am absent from the rituals

of birth and death, my attention

is elsewhere.  The obsessive

carving of reality must take place.

The gift I don't deserve

must be shredded into

shimmering fragments.

Man must survive on the salt

of dead ideas.  This skin

is a kind of armor I put on,

and it doesn't work.

This cactus tongue

is milky as a neon pen.

The frame falls off

from the jagged landscape.

I am aligned with the dying god,

with the ones of this world.

There is no other seeking.

Luminescent curlicues unfurl

on a cold horizon.

They are not straight, they tremble

like frozen lashes.

The way the blankets heave,

the dome of space has opened up,

a voice without language is calling,

calling.