With the masters in infinity

the cloak of darkness parted to the core

long walks alone are the only afterlife

stalled engines shimmering

with energy of decay

stunned ministers in the aisles

of their own elaborate iniquity

shorn of all corporate meaning

the desperate adventure is enough

staircases are cutting

glowing stone steps

down the canyon sides

finally water is speaking

in long lines without rhyme

filling machine rivulets

awesome in its terrible need

of fruition to inhabit

the cymbals drive the drums

to unforeseen ceilings

to decorate the bedrooms of the damned

his voice goes pouring through

the time trashed shopping centers

from motorcycle stereo everywhere

and dim framed garages of glory

his soul is one perplexed rotating wheel

So many selves, so many lives,

so many versions.  So many doors

left open to empty houses.

In my own life

I am an awkward stranger.

I wait for the roads

radiated by rain

to fade again.  I watch from

a private window

that follows me everywhere.

It pours the light of day

through ancient walls.

It frames receding faces

that drank from the kaleidoscope.

The moth wing curtains fall

across a plush red empty chair.

My ghost is a drop of sweat

that stares and stares.

It multiplies with a dancer's hair.

The droves descend on graves of mud

and insist on purgatory.

Messages released throughout the maze

tell a different story.

So many lives, so many selves,

all lost in motion.  These shot stars

are the devotion of a soul

gone down to seek disintegrating glory

in the sequel of a black hole

like the skull is the bone that rolls

as a seeker calls the void home

outside that is where the hungry roam

and the emptiness is not alone.

City lights are in my veins

roads winding down to country lanes

from a kissed hilltop

to the remnant of a ruined well

clouds are bundled in a sacred cell.

Bands of copper hold

the spear tip of continuum in check

bright buttons of the armor

that pops open like a scoured shell

clay pinnacles of damned museums

glazed with rage of caged desire

the fetters of a frozen fire.

Your insignia is on me like a knife wound

when I see the ledges in your memory

I go pouring over

owls rearranged in liquid metal

staring from the branches of a submerged soul

make no noises in their dreamless landscape

tubs of spirit paint

floating in a larger basin

of spirit water

harbored by a ring

of yearning force field

printed as the replica you wanted

walking out from narrow alleys

into the expanse that eats the enhanced

and leaves the trace of the original

its hooks in heaven

trained by a hellish love

the seam you left in my tenderness

is a scar from above.

Emerging as a popped bubble

with limbs of putty running

to be molded on these bloody rods

dirty train cars and their trails of dust

drum skin walls and desks of anti-gravity

silk blades and velvet chain transparent chairs

the fine hairs of a last uncharted pasture

lost between the lenses that have probed

eclipsing bolted doors

with waves of mirror cream

these starry nights are catalogued in crayon

and the tongues of stacked cloth

my bewildered eyes on lobster stalks.

The lisp of sunset

on a tipping plane

iced remembrance of

snaking kisses that dove through wrecks

and found their telepathic targets

costumes falling down the river's bank

into consuming water

five seconds from collapse

in a tin white painted tent

deep sleep on pillows of fire

drinking the cave water

painting walls of uneven rock

with hands of clay

fronds of neon nurtured by the mushroom

bridges soaring in their long and tender arcs

world that's gotten into my consciousness

fresh blooded buses of light

raging gently past the diner

octagons of water angels

floating over the hidden graveyards

plastic rams of mercy

stunning plush half hidden mouths

on the rims of a hidden south.

USAI

I will drown you in your own scum.

Christ the enslaver can get fucked.

Your money is brainwash,

your gardens are artificial.

Your country is a prison

for cattle willing to be led.

There are worse demons elsewhere,

it's true: nowhere for you to run to.

I'm talking to a part of my own soul.

In your bus stations I build

cathedrals of burning rubber.

I don't rip your saints from the walls:

I let their barren faces stand

as a testimony of your nullity.

Your spiritual death continues

in every avenue.

You have overflown yourself:

your ugly sprawl has ripped you apart.

I will stab the remnants with hate,

and that hate will become joy.

Your sacred scriptures are reels

of rotten monotony.

You speak with a liar's tongue.

I rip it out with a reverberant pen.

I stake you to the territory

that you have named, and I shit on you.

Picking up the feathers and their eyes

from the floor of a sentient dungeon

I'm a heap of broken plates and tubes

a door that will not open in a murky sea

lips opening inside a sail of leaves

shelves of pleasure stacked on burning cells

tarantella of fragmented selves.

Quiet beds of fish eggs

in stasis beneath shining plastic

bathed in beams of light

a machine's walled monolithic night.

Tongues that swim in vats of paint

a rack for absent brushes

whole solar systems raided

for a peasant's ragged overhang

the corpse's late returning brain.

I read of tribes that are gone

and live in their fragments

I sing the songs of the dead

invisible in the kingdom

of my birth that has defeated me

the pools of souls are empty

bodies are running ragged

on hot lit streets

eyes and teeth of glass

in the puppetry of plastic faces

bumper cars on huge conveyor belts

bronze teeth on a chain

that hangs from a mind that is crying

light's tools are darkened by necessity

painted by the sod that's flung

from torn creation

and the cold transparent wheel

I am among them with my scissors

my cut flowers and my unheard catcalls

ricocheting in the belly of the void

a styrofoam seed in a chute of steel

a wisp of cloud licking

at the temple ceiling

a pack of elaborate cards

left scattered in the cage below.

INVERTED CATHEDRAL

It won't fit in a snowglobe

floors go flowing to pupils of lava

points descending to the core of earth

in ornate catacombs

carnal art in its descriptive spirals

winding rivers of mortar and stone

linking masks along red lit corridors

stairs of reconfigured bone

doors with doors and latches with latches

rind of echoes that deepen

and sharpen against uncaught time

blind mouths singing from a lake of lime

root shaped tunnels with windows that look

into the soul of the dirt

peeled saints on a bed of cinders

torn skirts of the blueprint that hurt.

In the silicon womb

reaching fingers with their bones of light

keep a ticking clock on ice

to circulate the sacred particles slow

bands of solar systems row by row.

Ribbons pouring from the idol's mouth,

tendrils licking at a path of sugar.

Crucified ants making little noise.

Suds rising from a tank of fish

that look like swimming bullets

with faint transparent fins.

Secret ribs of the earth

their caves of ethereal honey.

Cubes of stunned airless space

holding blank hot consciousness.

Smoking closets of divine debris

half shut against a hellish sun

closing liquid eyelids.

Voices in a cloud of wonder

high above a veiled abyss

singing through boxes with magic wire

silk beds on unreachable platforms

fire forming concentric circles

jeweled letters are a list of griefs

of some flashing morning that won't

give way to noon and let the evening

send out boats like minnows

on the sharp frills of a separated sky

and its web cracked wide.

Forms cast in wild garments

quiet as the grave in mind

dancing on the ice that creaks their names

while the chandeliers play cherub's games

and the candles have bulbs not flames

in the sanctuary's swollen maze.

I am a jellyfish dripping

over these floors

watching the squares drink

up the bloody oil

letting the scales of a fake sky

flake and fall from the original

landing in an otherwise empty lot

bricks tangled in ropes of taffy

glass magnifies my third eye

and the multitudes after

lacing dark material together

moon in a cube of harp strings

drawers of compact light

separating from a high tower.

Swimming loops of royal blue

red tipped finger lakes

dead zones of raging gray

skin suit left lying

on a grass blood hill

melting into a map of fungus

swells where we swam

in naked cups of stone

green mud on sacred faces

beams of crude searchlights

flickering over the wounds

in time space

a long graffiti rail

guarding magnetized trains

of hail

THE GREATS

I swim with the greats: I see

how much greater they are than me.

Yet I swim in their midst:

it seems the only place to be.

They are flowing over the portals,

eclipsing all the radiant doors.

Yet the light pours.  It pours

through them like the water of life

they contain.  And it grows from all

creation's needed stain.

At the threshold, they are with me

like a nerve storm.  With me like

a rain of eyelashes, writing me

like nanotechnologic ink.

With me as I'm ripe to sink.

They don't need to feel anymore:

they simply emit.  I am with them

like a lover and not a whore:

but I would be their whore.

Their presence is the lion's

captured roar.  But they

are still wild.  Their departure

is as mysterious as their birth.

They never belonged to man.

Now they belong to God,

their shattering maker.

Their return must come

through the unworthy:

this is the irony that pleases

Him best, for He is Anarchist.

They linger near the rim

of a great fiction: these

necessary devils and their

warped angelic diction.

The fireplace of these

senseless locations

whispers all their names.

And the song frays to extend

its living ends: one burrows within.

OPENING DAY (Alive For Business)

This world was made for liars,

fools, and the obedient.

None lead, or follow: all drift

together on unnoticed currents

far outside the sacred.

What do I call the sacred?

A fist inside a grain of rice.

A flower popping within

a flickering oven.

A prolapsed moonlit sky

leaking bats like tears.

I am the enemy here.

Unseen entertainer of the spheres

with many lips, my rebirth

is a drug trip, having taken this body.

I stack the books of their dead god

with the countenance of some

vibrant poison frog.  There's no home

here in their fog of law: I am their

extinct claw scraping letters raw.

Their underworld can't be counted.

I am hound and denizen

of its accelerating corridors.

A thief's unwanted seed

is my genetic core:

I just mind the store.