PRACTOPIA*

I brought the buckets

filled with motley grapes.

I brought the albums

shimmering in crates.

Satanism means controlling fire.

Seed and egg survive upon this pyre.

They bomb us and they tear our forms apart:

we gave ourselves already to this art.

Our children know the way that fire feels.

They know the wound collapses time

before that fire heals.

This weal on Earth, we called that civilization.

But in its death we found another nation.

It is a spirit binding us to life.

The strife we feel we don't fear

like a knife.  The harmony we've earned

is hard and real.  Beneath the mask

so borderless and peeled.

The talkers talked but we

made love all night.  We're fucking

to renew our second sight.

Our babies grow and learn

to part the mist.  Their eyes

are angels forming into fists.

*  The title is derived from a talk given by anarchist activist Lorenzo Kom'Boa Ervin entitled 'Those Things that Result in Victories'.  The basic idea is that while utopia is not possible, better life practice is: that revolution and unity in freedom can revive the human spirit towards greatness, if not perfection.  The audacity to link my work with his was inspired by the great Greg Devlin, my mentor and dear friend, who died in 2014 but lives on in his poetry and in all those he inspired.

THE OLIGARCH KILLER

First I'll staple your hands to your desk:

I brought a carpenter's toolbox.

Then I'll fuck your face with a baseball bat,

using nice, long steady strokes.

My hands are already dirty

from all the work you don't do.

Then I'll whack at your elbows

until those arms come apart,

skin sliding like a pair of socks

from thin muscle and bone.

I've already removed the fish

from your very impressive fishtank:

this is a fishnapping.  They are swimming

in a bucket in my truck.  You'll have no

such luck: you're getting dunked, son,

headfirst with all the little that's left of you.

Murder can be sweet, murder can be delicious,

murder can be clean like doing the dishes.

I replace my stapler and leave whistling.

Your feces turn the fishtank brown

from green as we enter the present.

No vacancy remains: you were never a resident.

Deep breath goes through the earth

I won't resist the plunge

of these deep purple ravines

water is seeking my vacant heart

through the channels of an older rain

I call on all the spirits of devotion

who walked a fine ledge

carving all the ruins of the air

into fleshly being

building bones inside their souls

setting them upright in magnetic swamps

and lighting their astral hair on fire.

The grins grow from the charcoal

linking to the glint of black water

and the sent light of dead stars

falling through the bars of heated darkness

growing roots into an engorged sky.

Arrival with black eyes

and gummy veins.

A dark apartment

outside history.

Asbestos breath.  The sinks run

with the blood these trials shed.

A line of stones leads

to a deeper door.

I'm going there

to find my sacred whore.

Jerusalem has changed.

The beast they've caged

can only be deranged.

I pace around my room.

This place they scraped,

it used to be a womb.

I've scraped it too.  I have no right

to ask to be renewed.  But I do.

I found a solid seat

within the clouds.

Stiff angels watched

some demons dancing down.

From above?  This changes

everything to some state

we can never know.

I turn the cockpit

toward the sky and blow.

The ferment of the stars

then comes apart.

I must have kept them

clustered in my heart.

Trucks with carts of blades

rolling over deep grass hills.

Kites of woven grass

flying high from strings

of lilac colored thread.

A golden hawk flies through

a clean square tunnel,

toward me from the light

in the depths of the other side.

SATANIC SUNDAY

An abandoned dead end back road

is my favorite spot in Rossville.

The only building is a wrecked church.

The wreckage is more beautiful

than the original.  The cracked steeple

stands crookedly on the ground

in front of the mildewed walls.  It fell

in a storm, already weakened by neglect.

I come here with a craving for wildness,

to see the errors of civilization overthrown.

I worship the feminine spirit

of the crawling woods.  I allow it

to anoint my every precious orifice,

to open me up to cleansing inner fire.

This is my satanic Sunday service,

torn with ink from the hands

of priestcraft.  I see Satan with his fiddle

in the forest, I see him in the circle

of jubilant witches, lining up

to smooch his sweet behind

by the glow of the flames,

his violet hole washed clean

by the breath of the river.

How I want to be like him.

The fallen foremost Son

who sacrificed his whole existence

to art, music and revolution.

Satan's joy will resurrect

this fallen tabernacle

and make it a bronze obelisk.

The crucifixion?  That was just a kiss.

ARTFUL STUMBLES

Isolate that speck of life,

and fan the flames and waves.

Let these forms pour over it.

See if it can survive, pertly.

How do these cells speak?

Does your God live

inside a vast Woman?

Let me find that milk

and drink it all, or just

what's meant for me.

Let me have that cosmic titty.

Use my veins as seeking fingers.

Figure me out.  Tie my sex

to the stars.  Give this prayer

to someone who can write it better.

Touch my trembling clay

take me home to your vast reminder.

I surrender my agenda: give me

only the spark that sings.

SWAMPMAID'S RETURN

I sat beneath a bridge with my notebook,

watching birds boomerang in the viaduct.

I saw a swampmaid crawling

toward me through a drainage tunnel.

Her face and body were scarred,

but her terrible beauty still shone through.

She gave a rueful smile

as she emerged: we recognized

each other from nights

of love and madness

in the deep swamps of Georgia.

"Was it another orgy?"

I asked, teasing.  Swampmaids

have a gritty sense of humor,

and she laughed.

"There are cords, or strands,

that we don't see, anchored

in physical reality.  Right now

your kind is anxious that

the visible cords are being cut:

but the invisible connection,

the deeper fabric, is already gone.

This is the end of your time,

and ours too."

I took her slimy hand

and kissed it once, rubbing

the scaly back with my thumb

to press the kiss deeper.  "I can still

visit you in your swamps, and join

your frenzied water dances,

coated in your precious scum

that lets me breathe in mud?"

She laughed again (they like it

when I make speeches and perform).

"In former times we never would

have brought you into our midst,

no matter how deep your curiosity.

But now--our worlds are being

crushed together into this one:

we might even transform you

near the end, if you wish: it will

shorten your lifespan, but it will

also make it more--vibrant.

You are a dark and savage beast

but we find we like you."

I like you too, swampmaid.

I have fallen in love with your esoteric

and furious ways.  Give me fins

close to the end, and give me gills.

Let's watch their world burn

from the water that they scorned

and fuck like gods

in the radiant muck.

Let all my blood turn brown

as dark as earth before I drown.

On a ledge full of flowers

looking over little kingdoms drowning

brain pans filled with candy

rails that slither for haunted towns

cracked lots sighing under folded wings.

If I went fetal on this rock

and excreted my eyes

still the presence of natural channels

would lead me home to outer space

and seal this manuscript in gathered guts

beneath glistening lacquer.

Chariots of wheat are

piled high with sleeping bodies.

Clouds of steel are gathered

on harsh electronic poles.

The stumps of fallen trees are waiting

the soil beneath the blooming leaves is waiting

doors in stone slide open

pouring lights from naked ballrooms

the skin's transparent tresses

waterfalls of blonde on bones.

ON THE LEAVES

Bend down and kiss the Earth, wench:

spread your genitals for me

and let me watch them glisten.

Let me fuck you in the rain

and stay close and deep inside,

bathing my whole seed-shoot

in your juices.

We can laugh on the leaves

and kiss afterward.  We can

roll around in them

and let them stick to our skin,

we can let leaves

be our clothing for a day.

ROSA

Diamond mind

how I wish I could

find you in your epic dreams

and resurrect you

take you to a place

of luminous cool

and heal your wounds

with light.

BIOLOGICAL TRASH WITH SOUL

Your fecal gods, your fecal lovers,

are coming to tear you up

and attach your fragments

to an endlessly crawling vine.

You will be dispersed

in conscious pieces,

watched by hateful, luminous eyes

that never stop staring

in fascinated disgust

at the mottled pieces of your hubris,

which was the only form

you chose to inhabit, so that now

this wreckage of your form shows

what it was actually worth: little chunks

of cosmically imprisoned meat

carried far by overwhelming forces.

NO SORROW

The angel of death

is the only one left.

Humanity is foul

inside and out.

They wander in the paths

of their worst fathers,

who abandoned them,

and still they follow

like the shades of anti-life

they really are.

Their footsteps kill.  And I

can only walk away from them

so far.  It's never far enough.

I won't worship this race.

I know my hideousness too well

to think I could do fundamentally better.

We think we pop the latch,

but we attach the fetters.

ALPHA THE ROOSTER

Keeper of the Coop

Little feather footed warrior,

little speck of heated red,

your plumage is bright again,

face down in your dish

on a nest of wood chips.

That raccoon that almost

tore your head off

left your beak battered

and your tongue swollen.

Food could barely catch your smell,

much less your taste.

You survived for a week

on the water that I used

to bathe your wounds

plus whatever I could pour

down your throat.

And you were thirsty.

One day you choked

and I turned you upside down,

pouring the water out of your little body.

You fluffed your neck feathers

and emitted two little croaks.

I tried to feed you figs,

I peeled them first,

I brought you a dish of fish

crushed into paste.  But by then

all that was left of you

was will and water.

So that in the end, in the morning

when your body was rigid with death,

there were few flies and no feces.

You were purified, clean,

ready for deep, rich sleep in the earth

where you defended your coop.

Oh my brave little bantam,

these forests will remember your fury

and your sterling cry.

MIDDLE AGE

I'm done trying to figure it out.

I know the maze leads

to another maze.

I'm going anyway.

I want to know just how much more

I cannot really know.

I want to see its mystery unfurl.

I'll sing it a song: it might

be an ax, it might be a lullaby.

Either one is right.  I love them both.

Time has forgotten me.  I've been quoting

things that someone never said,

and yet it fits.

Time has remembered my best bits,

said a doll on a dashboard.

That was in a foreign car, that

was in a foreign year.

Some in mid way say

let somebody else steer, let go,

relax.  I'm getting off

before their naps attack.

The bus chugs on its river of tar

the street is going elsewhere

I no longer need imagine it is mine.

Into the glories of the netherworld.

Into the astral blossoms of the void

that pop like rice paper walls

in another realm

while this one remains almost

soundless, and red.

Galactic amber spilling into bed.

The threads of space

are pulling many webs.

The shutters bled before:

they are painted in such

slow drips.

ALPHA

Alpha, our little feather footed

bantam rooster, is the only one

in the hen pen.

Most of the old hens

are four times his size.

He lives to defend and fight.

When I bring a saucepan full

of chicken feed

he attacks in a red blaze.

I dump the food quick

for the hens, turn the rear of the pan

towards him as a shield: he bounces

off the thing like a dragonfly

or a hummingbird,

but when I close the pen

and look at the pan

his beak has left a scar

on the copper bottom.

This morning, Alpha's head and tail

were mangled, he was blind and covered

in blood, but still he stood.

His crow was silent: he had fought something

bigger and stronger than himself,

in the night.  The oblivious hens

strut back and forth, nobody

else was touched.

Now we keep him

alone in the smaller chick hatch coop,

with some fresh grubs and feed

and torn figs.  We wash his injuries in a pool

and leave him with fresh water.

Chickens don't like to move

in the dark, and he is blind.

His tongue is swollen in his mouth

from the wounds of his battle,

but his tough little feet

are strong and sure,

gripping the edge of his dish.

His pride is quieter than his crow

but his pride is not broken.