DEEP AS THE GASH

I respect extreme experience, I respect soul.

I can't understand excessive cleanliness,

I don't see the appeal.  Maybe I only

relate to addicts, to those enslaved

by insane pleasures.  I must be one of them.

They must be here to stretch and strain

my consciousness, we must be here to be

slingshotted into the cosmos.

I am still the evil boy who wants more.

I still seek the shocking fullness of the void.

My companions, they have wandered away,

they must be doing the same.

The game plays everyone:

we want to get played hard.

We are not those who seek

the fuckless side of God.

The real crown waits beneath

the royal fraud.  The silence talks.

Rain taps on the drum skin

sweat taps on the brain skin

phallic apartment towers rise

like windowed cobras

teeming with topless beauties

scales of sunbeam fragments

sliding slowly down the mask of fate

my desk is a chip caged from a glacier

the tip of my tongue has teeth that keep

biting my fingernails

my blood rests in a dead volcano

a diving board protrudes from my skeleton

my paperweight bronze heart is the size

of the planet's soul.

MALAMBRUNO

I'll enchant you bitches

with vines of death

that create pleasure,

take on the names

that have been imprecations,

and wear these costumes

in the sated blue

of late wet quiet streets,

filled with plants and meat

I am your profane sermonizer,

sowing fire in the blood

that waves from craven parades.

On tombs I paint with clay

and make refined sadistic engravings,

you will drink these muddy paths

and the stream they run beside

to be the throat that rides.

Educated by dissection

formed on wings of insensate steel

to be the anchor's wheel.

Places of misery deep in my soul

floating in memory's gravy

surfacing shiny like tin

a swamp of tires turning over

a singing memo from destroyed lands

peaks enchained with nightmarish lights

pits of giant lice crawling on fire

stacks of money to sleep on

corridors alive with a flying serpent

seams of ancient paths sown under rock

finding my errant bloodstream

cooking in a lunar pot

this wart filled pock marked vessel

shoplifted from the high angelic shelf.

Headgear of chrome tongues

that whisper hatreds in soothing forms

pretty quills that hook

unwilling flesh back into false existence

dancing on a heated plate

that shines with gold.

Nooses dangling from hand carved rafters

decorative with ribbons and

the trickles of collapsing names.

Sediment of days crushed

treated as a sacred powder

laid in lines upon a rotten monument's

sick rings of concrete ooze.

Robotic bloodhounds sniffing

plastic coated ground

a throne of feces emerging on fetid stone.

Grease moving on vague plaques

of civic terror

worship of antique teeth

caught leering from a fossil's frozen mouth.

Veiled ornament of vacant crowds

drifting skyward on a kite of womb skin

jewel of inspected acres

rising on strings of steel.

Electrode cables prick my sleep

I float on silk leaves

under the smoke of an attacked harbor

this circuitry deserves its rope of wounds

convulsions wrought in space

the colors of departed air

a park bench on a meteor

the shade beneath

the strength of a straw hat

and then not even that.

The fabric bulges up above

a steaming cemetery

loaded with the letters of dead tribes

and sucking stars

pulling at the oils of the lard

pooling in a tidy dish

for some emperor to drink away

the sleep of death in money's empty rays.

Oblivion my last elusive beauty

with the curvature of many bonus earths

feeding mouths are printed on the castle

draining all the offshoots of the curse.

The magnolia tree is still

alive, with nine visible

blossoms.  This sight of earth

is from my father's bones.

Plastic wrapped halls open

between growing stalks.

Webs of wire

dangle dancing images

above the neon campsites.

This flowing valley is observed

from an emerging rock.

Old leaves are scattered in wax

on the resin of a fresh carved path.

Waterfalls crashing like the laughter

of happy women.  Of a commons

where the well washes

rows of tired faces with buckets

of cool purple light.

The black hole's window

is in gold lace on the cusp of space.

A chair of rest smokes gently

with gone green hereafter.

The sky can't breathe

and the clouds can't think

wreathed skeletons arrive and sink.

The ceiling fan turns

in a golden lamp of light.

A thick cat purrs on my lap.

He lives in irritable error

til he settles in and vibrates.

His evil is the wound from which

the laughter of the ages pours.

We need mischief.

Hell's abyss is heaven's risk.

There is no escape from

the stone in the middle

of the head, the stone

in the middle of the head.

Cats love violent acquisition,

they seek out dangerous play.

The engines roar a mile away.

Hills are swollen tongues of land

under tar.  The stars are far.

They're tangled in my nerves.

This tangled web

of horrible connections

is the pain that I deserve.

I'll turn it into a cloak.

It'll turn me into a pound of butter.

In the fields, in the fields

left open by the dying

you can hear the sacred fiends mutter.

We have whole civilizations inside us.

Full of beings, who want to know souls.

Ledge cafes cackling at liquid train cars.

Aisles in rock pulsing deep red light.

Towers with attaching bridges

roads through jeweled caves

teacups heavy as warheads

glued to glossy sex drenched floors

the fan blades of breathing systems

cutting off strange yearning limbs.

Engines with kaleidoscopic sinkholes

pulling sight through ecstasy of pipes

to land on grains of this robotic sand

combed by sad sword fingers

bronze heat of massive praying mantis.

Aching forth with infinite content,

mating fiber optic ooze.

Sprung from this cathedral meat

a tongue of truth lost deep

in labyrinthine ruse.

The wings that fold over horizons

the venom that soaked my brain

cool paths winding next to a hot river

sparks touching embryonic webs

a wheel that's melting bone

in heavenly metallic rafters

the list of names that are gone

tattooed on my tattered flesh

I watch the bridge twinkle

with gliding lamps

feel roads intertwining under me

to produce a last afterbirth

gone from angelic flesh

and the bite of sweet syringe teeth

caged in an envelope of weightless water

waiting for the razor threads

to catch a blown unfrozen demigod

and split him from the crown of earth

and then waiting for nothing

with open hands to catch a hard mirage

in a closed garage.

LENTICULAR CLOUDS AND NECKLACE HOUSES

Gears cranking with colored feathers,

rubber mountains pocked with

oily pools of real swamp grass

and dancing naked electric dolls,

paths traced through resistant air

by sinewy lightning, floating mounds

of machine dung, the kissing of

spray painted nuclear warheads.

Symmetries broken by a smiling baby,

tall audio speakers thrumming

with demonic joy.  Lice of the red forest

that thrives, fangs of molten light lucky

to decorate the sensitivities

of rising antennas.

Tinfoil sheep on a wolf's fur hillside,

dead eyes tracking

what the living cannot see

waves lapping what has ceased to be.

KNIGHT ERRANT SERPENTINE

Faithful to the strange dreams of the west,

its outcast loves and fertile failures,

chill paths and renegade heat

intertwined in orgasmic horror.

Anomalies with flaming tongues

landing on a bright scum lily pad.

Fresh buds of antique voodoo,

spells cast on sunken wood

with sentient blood.

The tendrils fall through space

to reproduce black holes,

pouring mortal glory through

the new immortal mind.

I'm riding the only one that rides,

the queen of irrepressible tarot.

The armored anti-saint of the last

visible bow, her last

invisible arrow.

The strange ways of suffering times

ash of bones on a shore that fades

the light that sweeps like a wind

closets packed with grimy dollars

colors streaking from the mouths

of lightning-struck pipes

the seams of pain-stitched images

fountain-formed people laughing

I find the tape of conversations

tied around a field of nodding daffodils

rippling from the branches

of a bent orchard

this acid cake of yearning land

the rivers of my rivers that are hands

horns picking the apples

bird bones on trays of china

left behind on a squirming map

as the landscapes flap.

The queen is hiding in the red

behind the red behind the white

hiding in the light of my sunset spoons

knitting renegade blood vessels

left behind on ancient stone

in maps of forested labyrinths

and the torment of gorgeous creatures

melted scales that bring love back to life

with a wincing gash.

She is walking over dams

watching active water,

seeing the animals that carry me

and the rogue moon

of luminous moss,

caught up in my teething culture.

Desire is her grid of dreams

but not her conqueror,

the flying ships don't dent

her slick dark glasses

or her hyacinth mood.

And it takes me past the reeds

played by amphibian masters,

past the ass-prints and

the tit-prints she has left

on wailing walls, far past

the living buildings and

their courtyard halls.

I am where her venom falls.

The couches float like coins

in a strong whirlpool, they'll settle soon.

The bedclothes make a palpitating tomb.

The crown of frozen blood

evaporates at a touch, foggy tar

flows down swelling hills

of a restless earth.

Blankets are alive on grass

the voice of smitten soil

twitches its hairy masks

and tables polished with vinegar,

the severed eyes in a river

still afloat reflecting sadness

from the ones cut awake

to bleed slowly in carpeted halls,

stems dripping on departing floors

in the house of artificial lords.

With the tongue of a demon cursed

and hands that are heavy

with a hard heart crushed

by the architecture of sad circumstance,

fences raised with flowering vine

and moats of cleansed water

glowing like liquid metal

links of ever flowing chains

that spring loose from botched existence,

firmament of mirror stars

where my features are a misfire

and the cultures of man fall away

into the realm of unfertilized shadow

and the wings of a trash can spray

decorative ooze on the honored tombs,

under the birth of zombie classes

and the howl of sad parties

clinking glasses in the core

of an expanding prison,

voiced by wires

and disintegrating paradigms

a nipple of barren stone

shaped by desperate lips

mistress of inverted nonexistence

dealing diamond schisms

to the catacombs of once paused pistons.

I took acid that turned me into a cat.

But not really a cat--consciousness

searching mirrors to be seen

from inside a cat's image.

This is a poem about death disguised

as a poem about transformation.

There are no poems about death.

Thoughts occur to me in the form

of other people's bodies.

I build a dome and then rise over it.

I strip off all the names

and put them on again backwards.

I am glued to this stool of bones

with my strings of subtle war

vibrating in a chord of joy.

I am not a toy of time, or history's bitch.

I can switch off.  I ride the spirit

like a catching glitch.  I take the light

bouncing from graves to be a sublime sign.

There is no plan for mine

and the shadow of the skin's outline

holds libraries that rave and rave

for the whiskers that were never shaved.

Arabesques of cloud don't lick

the moon with their many tongues.

She doesn't float, she isn't free.

In a metal dream

the tendrils curl around her

like a ring's clasp.

I home in like the brain of a wasp.

The automatic windows wake me up.

The moon reflected in a greasy cup.

I never drank the dregs.

She isn't female, she doesn't give

a fuck.  The symphony of cymbals

falls down many colliding walls.

The gilded glory without milk

or blood.  Terraced cities gleaming

paved layers and then laminated layers

rising like reptilian minds.

Arrows find me like many

electronic messages

at the pillar of discarded saints.

Lunar lending is a sun that paints.

The muck and brine of heaven

a kaleidoscope of skies

tar paths steaming

through the ways of green earth

two skeletons in leather seats

strapped into the melting timeline

rails flashing over long bronze curtains of dirt

tufts of blossoming embattled flowers

the chaos of the seeds unsown

and the pain of ignition

surf of ink eclipsing cells of need

I sit on hot cement and watch

a rotating doorway

moths fluttering on dusty glass

the suitclothed gathering

with barely animated blood

sipping alkaline airfresh nintendo

immortal pillars falling on the rape divine

and the thoughts of stony slopes of pine.

I've been blasted through the tunnel

with the long lights overhead

I drank rum in the concrete belly

and jumped from the viaduct on high

hoping to keep pace with the brightest waterfall

watching the stories all go

silent as colored sand

and all of my works were wrapped

in evaporating skin

and all of the cups I poured

for smiling ladies

ran down the walkway

where my spirit now resides

it's a graveyard auditorium overlook

that rides in steel spectator seats

and sad impotent looking

but the sun is a seed cracking

and roads of lava intertwine like tongues

and then like tangled brine

exits flashing in a final sign

and the valley's mine.