<><><><><>

I used to take people in, find them chairs, try to get
them to stay awhile.  The ice sets on the outside.

I have my burden of miscommunication to carry.

As if my whole existence has been rejected,

I walk around reeling, with powers useless,

unconscious.

           At the bottom, closed-circuit void,

           un blur the entrance, a killer of psalms,

           dug in, wisdom less, cursed with joy,

           throttling the mutual organism for pleasure.

<><><><><>

The cold threatens my hands
     which I cannot retract.
 The mirror threatens the cold
     with my own death,
       as if that would dampen it.


The outdoors threatens the indoors
      and its instructions are intact,
       as if preserved in electricity.
     The lenses of time turn backward
         on its grid work of dancing.


   High afternoon waits to explode
          in the dragon's belly of a pocket
           restaurant, flashing and urging
          in six pairs of eyes for every
             one.  And partakes of the lunchbreak,
                 smoking and fleeing.


Scarves fall from my hands on the way
      to the laundromat, and pantyhose,
       and chandeliers of corsets and
     thongs, wait for me there
   in the ceiling detachment
     above the throne of coins.


Scarcity can wreck, scarcity
     can make an incredible animal.
 The scarcity of time can shrink
       the scarcity of all
          these other things.

<><><><><>

In the newly awakened areas more feline artists will emerge
    self-contained high-impact polystyrene animal-moles
at once the four hooves poised menacingly above;
    to excite the interstellar galaxy's outer edge trace its spiral arms
bright little highly textured dabs of his own for a long comforting licking
    a vast spherical shell of stars a robotic mission within the 186, 000 miles a second


      stretch from Earth a nonmetal charcoal briquette
   tornado torch to mimic the harmonic point
     with warmth, scent and sit in the mid-field or meridian
   simply stop struck by the most territorial observation
     the transmitters the cats were fitted with calendar, chrome-plated black dial
   for ladies unbreakable mainspring oval shape cavatina with play equipment


In the ring is the one central bulge and core surrounding the galaxy
a hollow place in his bed as elements burn

<><><><><>

I am burning my life
 down into a low murmur
                 of truth;
 waiting there, until vocables
              mutate into truth, nerves
       meet in truth, and all else
                is gobbled into truth,
                       wetly.

<><><><><>

Pretty as the head of a nail
   made for linen, scrolls and perfumes
      through an arch of polished town dreamed miniature
      where her eye-diamonds alert and sprinkling numerous messages
                                                                 ash on the concrete floor
    my jaw on the wood of not staring
         her belly of twenty-five country summers
              the oops texture of air arrested
          by the cool bustle of her curve and matrix
             thought bubble of jukeboxed intelligence
           the light in the belly with a hoof
             a sunset near her fingernail adjusting

<><><><><>

Even my hair was lit
      with a new fire
        when I bathed in the light
                     of your presence.
 That which breatheth life and wrecketh,
  shoots mesmerized out of the undying ground.
    Juiced and sprocket of caves,
     forked mouth signifying
                                everything,
          I give you both my enough and my not-enough,
          bring me ointment under cover,
                                       clover come tow me down.

<><><><><>

These machines are making me jumpy.
      I go around showing myself to people
           to make sure I'm still here.
     I don't want to be in a place
      where nothing in the air
        speaks to me.
 Behind a coiled mass of bronze
     a deep red fire goes on and on.
 In its throne of warped and muted echoes
                                          I am seated
                                                     and calm.

<><><><><>

Smashed diamond with towns in its slanting sides
 smashed diamond hides all the time
  glacier deep in its kisses departing
   shards of sidewalk to the moon
    drubbed with drunken foot

<><><><><>

A mysterious siren, my brother as I
must be rounded or flung high
into depths that clutch upward or downward
circuit the same light dull dawning
or trapped light in the belly of a mule
lips on cruise control body talking
or trapped light in the light of a cubicle
vacuumed land of the vacuumed man
a grey-rugged hell strewn with skin
peeling from being, dying cells in hexagram
dying, flirting with terror on a surf's
     promise

<><><><><>

The scorched cemetery of desire:
 fearless wind, no dagger, minimal
 conflict of bones, the cliff-faces in evening gowns,
    a hardened mystic, chest-wound in the golf-cart,
   fluttering of the thing houses of fools
    spattered by their own idiocy, hating the hollow
                                                                          dawn,
                                                     and jazz, and loving
                                             only their streamlined reptile.

<><><><><>

A morsel of my humanity
    preserved on the cliff's edge: the scarred
      neighborhoods applaud with streetlights
                                                 and wire.

<><><><><>

The face carved backwards: the spirit carved backwards.
The whole hideous self a wasteland of swollen milk.
Frisson in eyelids, in eyelashes, in long and curving and strong
and slender branches, that hold the climber with hands that walk upside,
down, lines knotted with other lines: mercury vapor, no face,
wildly edible poison, everywhere, the landscape inhabiting masks.
Telephone of ozone cracking like a June bug.

<><><><><>

Fluctuate between two beams fledge
               of the same, both denied
 bodysnatcher of dreams,
                 scaffold on empire's sidewalk
    which we walk under,
       partner in partner in parcel
                  to be parceled to power,
       within and without, trigger
           on trigger, demise on demise,
     until we fall prey, to the same light,
        absence's remainder: a space
      for those revisited by life to walk.

<><><><><>

Foliage of white marble
  perishable that, and perishable this
     marriage of total will to shadow
      lineage of ripe metal
    sparking and flanging the cavern's eyes
  hurry of water state for water
    speak for water hurrah for water
  tongues of amber sunrise over the yellow hills
impermanent record of imprisonment
  stranded on razor's nothing burnt civilization
   nothing to live for nothing to die for one with the heart
     breathing cages and piping calls
      bodies unalone, restlessly
        never free of one another
          never free
      city of functionless behavior
 unnecessary empire
      toil of fools
         disengage yield yammer of twilight
    fuck off into a fault-stammer

<><><><><>

With dual swivel electric hair
 we will beat, skin on these
   skin drums, until your prisons
      melt like taffy
    for the wounds of the poor
        and the mutilated.
   There will be no rest.
The glowing presence of different chemical joints on a highway
 pop-up trimmer for sideburns or mustache a deluxe lighted mirror
  sulfur and the dark blue streamers are richest and rear twin mats
    vanishing point ake up a whole
      in the same manner for car acoustics
       and flatten the roofs.

THE SKUNK SOBER

I dump licorice down my throat
 and avoid looking at the landscape:
   kissing your face, eating your ass,
     whoever you were, I knew you
         perfectly, and in return
                             I am lofted strangely
    so that the vague and pagan
              about death might dance.


The picnic levels that face out
  from corridors you walked, next to
       the ocean, drinking light
          from the erupted mirror,
           hair combed, ready for
             departure, ready for
                  helicopter
   you laughed with my ladies and everybody
       read the above and nixed it
           with a charcoaled thumb,


--it's too new, then too old,      
  plus it's one too many poems
   about rimjobs--but it's not
   about that, that's in addition to:
   love, it's great, I would just--
    drop a comma.


  My face went plaid with wine
   two American suckers at the
                   windowsill with drinks,
 tossing curses at the powerful
laughing hard, praising the customers of laundry
we painted 9 a.m. yellow ourselves
dabbed in gin to freshen the brush.

<><><><><>

With two quills protruding
                       from my tail, the feeler
          of space made blood,
  mercury paper a stillborn wall before me
     speaking is death under the vents of the mushroom
     speaking is death under the gills of the tower
     erotica blitz eyes covered with bookish lashes
      smile up tilted in the slash of a page edge
          remnant of beach peninsula follicle
                          glow fiber under the sand electronica

<><><><><>

I feel the burden of my tradition
 those who fought beauty out
         of the air.
 From a bejeweled position
     I stare out into the shit of night
The enlightenment of crones
                      descends like chicken feet
                                    on my head.
  I am rumored to be starring
       in several dimensions, a this-lifer,
               happily trapped in the cycle
                        of actions, the conqueror penis
                  comprehending
                             the insides of mankind.

<><><><><>

Trees re-formed and positioned for me
the docks in a tract of silence held flat on the water
kitten stare from a high slab moon
duck moan in a low harbor and the river eating
slender the cares that drape by mending
            sky's scape of murder to earth
 the rent of cerulean core
      pitch-dark fruit of ages
                      proliferating through walls
                  that fall to become their boulder-twins
                      a ditch of raspberry eyes
                pleading backwards from a path of sharper stones

<><><><><>

Riding through the aftermath
                of billions of lives
      with salt legs
            trailing everything nothing;
      spiny plant-precipice, touched & torched
               by lingering fires,
      made breath by vastness:
            how hard to carry without
      this gargoyle face, sternness
           these limbs of pepper