)()(

two lavenders
magenta and orange
I built myself a throne of magazines
to treasure silence
toss off ecstasy
the emptiness of beauty
two eyes on a rag
beer inside the heart
lung flowers of smoke
a certain pulse sound is waning
from the upper deck
where love won't listen to reason
no commands are coming

two lavenders
magenta and orange
the creatures dancing in canvas
who come out only for my hands
none can keep me company
in my body bent backward
from love and understanding much, too little
the murder of fictional destiny
that they cannot soothe
for they are moving

pulses.  The photoelectric surface is made up
heads and wings and long tails
the sex glands

slow heartbeat
the trachea in the throat

shelled evening
stars hardened in their casts
to watch the tension ascending

Hollyhock instruments and furniture
on the brightwork of boats, the superior vena cava

leaflets that turn red throughout the United States
and a scattering machine that must be split into different beams

each of the smaller tendrils a pattern of the sound on smoke
with five to seven lobes off a mirror standing near

three kinds of tubes: speech made the membrane for teaching caged
birds to sing with each other, creating light and dark

a disklike sucker pad which attaches
their peak in the famous

<*><*>

I turned into a cat.
I ate and moved back and forth on the floor tiles.
Do you love me more?
I believe I will tolerate you for quite some time.

Don't put my affection on a tow-rope.
The whiskers will come around presently.
Yours is to sit and wait.
Mine is the territory, claimed so quietly.

<*><*>

{}{}{}{}

The little girl is dreaming of gold.
Her father is holding a bullet.
They are together under all the winds of the earth.
Shopping carts and pinwheels roam
the scorched, flat terrain without will.

Someone is singing a song for them:
an unextended man, a very sad man.
As he raises his voice from a stone fence roadside,
the fibers of his being are infused with tender prophecy.
From the fracture in his spirit cast,
a healing river meets the many currents.

The embrace goes beyond blood.
Father and singer are one.
Tarnished earth, the choir of melted libraries,
the way the soft weight of the innocent child
hurts the arms that know.

The singing throat, love that wavers
no longer, suffering and still.
They are two men: they learn to talk
and then learn not to talk.
The little girl is dreaming of an unbroken god.

{}{}{}{}

*~*~*~*~*

a lattice shell around the open mouth
and the four other feminine ways
there are, to call me home
wires around the soul bunching

there is a bulwark of stone serenades
in the center of a cemetery
and a beercan, and a dampened cigarette
next to the tree that has seen nothing

and the textbooks, full of distilled valentines,
that will be made from its passing
the mold of crass destiny from a pulp of ancient wood
the mask successful even when broken
the freedom of the will locked up in a bus-stop bathroom

windows are salt swept into corners
a scaffold of chipped floors
a barren place to parse the electricity of death
which the field and the flower could not open
the curve of the last barrier singing against a wind

we anchor the ceiling to a life of chimes
and do not speak of its bombing

*~*~*~*~*

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`

Take my broken body
my trash mind
take my warped creations
my insane mission
take all these for your pleasure
all these for your time unweighed
lash me to your strength and your terror
an instrument of your imaginary galaxies
my fear in your fear
my near-total lack of understanding
gather these unto you
I am your harmonium

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`

~~~~~~

I love your dark dark
blood rich, Miss so much misused
by Massachusetts

the residue of a forgotten affection
coats my being from head to foot
and the sweetened horror
and the mountainous edges
melting in a wealth of planet light
hurl my song of water and sleaze
into the thinking air
and will not wait for propriety to shape its passion

you are an angle in heavens
that scorches the nearest bulb wall
and I wear its scratched fire
and I wear its silence like a second skin
and I wear its wound and its wig
and I wear its obscure image gleaming
wherever your body is absent and my eyes dry up on the earth.

If I could speak to you in the voices of every epoch
I'd woof time is not between us
all that can be discovered has found
a rift unknown to open
it is only these many fears of flying
the force of our division from a naked rib
which split along three seams
which split along two seams
which split along one seam
remain closed and do not release

~~~~~~

~`~`~

Magic is illegal on earth
and the false burden weighs, falsely;
light conveys to the bearer of light nothing,
she who visits is not the inertia of other planets.

There will be a merger of flesh with plastic,
there will be a total absence of ethereality
the cosmos will not lay back
stunned at all our beatings
and now that even the dark art has departed
alien are the inheritors, sacred only
are those who go up in flame alone.

~`~`~

[[[[[[[[[[]

Here in the earth's half-circle,
inadequately cloaked.
Semi-world's dying on the comma
of the tongue, the language of the body
in a grid of freezing snakes,
fur on the last ellipse
in a dying dialect
scythe-rings of a reachless planet
night moving apart
without resistance and without eyelids
watching the sky-hoop close over
vulvic magnet snowcap dawning
here in the earth's full bulk
still dozing

[[[[[[[[[[]

>>>>>>>>>>>

To see you in so much pain, brother
my teeth hurt from my skull
for the metal casing in which you live
hesitantly inhabiting your hard bed
your room of wood and glass
too high to climb down from
where the walls freeze
you are attentive to each common animal
to each fractured sun
you heed what comes down hard
and what rises frantically
I have a cesspool in my jaw
for the terrors you inflict upon yourself
so casually

>>>>>>>>>>>

THE HIJACKING DANCE

I was exiled from the woods
you were the queen of metal town
I was the king of the apartments
you were a runner of diamonds
which I never cared for
but your hands

ghost rivulets run
across imaginary planets
turn wheat to the air
mesh wants with desireless void
hear the thousandfold tractors doing nothing
as if we could watch each other's weather
over torched surfaces
shovels bent in rust on ditches' sides
water flowing that we wish would stop
and the airlines that move their tortured cables
into all this with the moss that beckons
and the railroad failing
and the subway coming through the wet soil regardless
and the appointed time for the moon to crack
the music of servants who slept on knives
while a short-lived camera shaped them in buried caves

I was the con man in your rearview
pretending to grin
you were not driving with elegance
it must be said that a restaurant exploded
it must be framed that we were at the centerpiece table
gleaming with the beauty of partial oblivion
waiting for one another to eat olives
from matching glasses

there is an end to the telling of memories
there is an ellipse in time-sheets
where even the softest gaze flickers out against
you who play with gods
you who make plans for society
tell me you have a name for it
so that we may laugh at one another

you were the mother of rulers
I was the father of no narrative
our war was mixed in with the lovers
a short-lived camera shaped them in buried caves
their blood on the reach of our splendour
their movements tethered hard to our cessation

we sat in separate beds on the same earth
warily eyeing each other, searching the spaces around each other
in a deep forgetfulness of windows
you were the queen of the woods
I was exiled from metal town
smiling

.......

A dusty diamond cluster cracks and blooms
between a pigeon's shoulder blades
on windows facing windows
in a narrow alley
the universe crushed into the 3rd floor
trembles with combs in hands
to skim cobwebs from feathers
pull twine from bones
take down time's fertile curtain
lightning pulled from the clock
a towering sorrow, a neutered phonebook

.......

)(()(

To the depth charge in rust
under the shine of the harbor
she is swimming powerfully downward
without a mask
with no jewels in her eyes
just the kindness of a creature falling

her fingers ringless trace in time
the boards preserved in salt
of my ship's bowing side
her ringlets uncrowned
spill life on sand her heels have trod
I'll rot my treasures open in the tide

)(()(

ROB THE PROPHET

His lower legs were melted off in a fry factory
he lay in bed longer than sleep toward birth
he began to have visions
to manifest and project
persons not yet arrived who would make deals at night
in the bulb light of his hollow room
he watched them changing
in the fog of their own presence
and he drew them out
led police to a broken-bridged ledge
broke his heels on the jump off
broke their eyes with his landing
broke the dream with his life of the world's ending

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

_______
}{}{{}{}{

Through the riverside thicket
I see a dim star, a distorted milky way
the deep behind it
the rough light won't make the water fade
all the factories have stopped blinking

If I can see my errors
in going to the store, and the emptiness
of all my hellos, all my
I'm doing well, all my worship exhausted
on the shore not yet licked smooth
why can't I step out of this path?

It rustles to fragment
it shivers to join the regimented maze
it leaves stones in my hand
that I picked from stems
and a marriage certificate
to be burned in the far corner of a parking lot

Through the winding of the water
I see the scarecrow in my clothes
signing check after check

}{}{{}}{}{

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Pigeons puff dust of seasoned salt
a cage of cameras
wielding institutionalized bodies

feral cats perched in branching air
teeth at the wind's edge to gnash
or grin at what pours over the sides

a childhood rain from a stadium ceiling
the crystal of civilization
where dead conversations graffiti the mind

when the country came too close
we held hands and jumped onto its forested boundaries

where the street's become a cage
she's an ivory-smasher
seated on a glacier's child
back of the dream she organized
my head will go bald in this room

she's a day-reducer
a full tub of evergreen fingers
my life performed in a nimbus of burning money

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

FINISH THE WINGS FOR MONA LISA

The song of the cicada has to be the epitome 1,000 times its own weight
of the stunning: a red lady
the wafer-thin bones of the face flow of energy upward
the twisted stamens of blooms that have long called the watery planet

the smell, the stab of the thorn, you form a pianist, a marksman--
the moon once baked in constant mesh
twisted skeins of hair energy in a flood
a crystal of copper day duplicated on earth
fluoresce through its black paper wrapping
and five billionths of this flocked to have their skulls read
elite among atom-smashers

+=+=+=+=+=

>>><<<

The ruins of a bird's nest
cotton from cigarettes, crumpled straw
birth's viscera, and the leaf-stems
of sacrificial trees
our efforts

You can find me on a floating porch
next to the highway where the creatures flee
in rubbered steel, to their deranged holidays
I'm not waiting for flesh on flesh
only to be removed from the human circuit for a moment
only for the animal twilight

An aborted hand, a ghostly unfinished ribcage,
small enough to cover only three frozen knuckles
on the back of my wishing right hand
to carry all the vacancies to empty plenitude

We are the gnashing grain
in the glades by the side of the tar there is still room for us
to stand and wait leering in whistle grass
trunks groan, artificial light goes down to the harbor
to be reborn in reflection

>>><<<

~-~-~-~-~

From the womb, the sun slammed into him.
When he began to think
he discovered he could not stop.
When he moved without, he moved within.
This motion was pain.  He looked for a day
that could cease, and when it came
he pulled all the other days
into its crater's pool.

He dumped out all his cups: where does anything go?
He burned all his blueprints: the structures rise
somewhere in the twilit outskirts
of the same aging universe.
The saviors failed him; he failed the saviors.
In rooms they talk, in open spaces
they speak and speak: language is mostly shield
and rarely pierces.

He took all his precious things and mixed them
with household trash.
Nobody dares clean in there, but they glimmer
even as they regurgitate darkness.
He banished himself from the only realm
where we continue to live; and the living
is freshly questionable.
And it seems he did not escape: he is lodged
deeply within--intermittently without--
uneasy as ever.

~-~-~-~-~