Venom lights the wick inside the bulb,

manipulates the flame

inside the dancing porcelain baby,

drives the eyes past

infinite imponderables

that retreat at top speed,

drives the eyes out through the eyes

and the soul out of the skull

to reside silently in dancing.

Venom touches gloomy corners

with chrome cones and shrinking

wheels, each turning on a fleck of dust,

each hidden gear equipped

with its own wet fang.

The splatter has a map within.

Fine parts are blotted out.

Branches grow like rivers

into the stark background.

Names are lost and form is gained

by grind.  Venom coats the stitches' lines.

I am climbing mountain rivers

to the sun, following

a cry of abandon,

following a jagged ray of light.

The rot I tread

is churning in the beds

mulched underwater,

crawling past my knees

to paint an armor

of mud upon this form

I move with pain.

Let the drum skins beat

between hollow trunks,

let beetle wings and lizard tongues

rain down.  May the current

wash me clean before I reach

the peak, the stripped sky

give me an interactive crown.

Over the planetary lobe

let the pierced horizon frown.

Trails of lace and velvet slides

a cemetery carved into a fingernail

rivers wrapped around the feet

of trapped stone angels

carrying foam boats

of plastic jewels

I am mirrored in magnolia leaves

my veins are poison vines

that climb the highest trunks

to find a resurrected sky

a pentagram is inked around

your deepest orifice

the gilt framed edges

wreathed by sticky spores

and bathed in lakes of sunlit pollen

the roads to ruined towers

are swollen tight against graffitied rails

and drummed by toxic hail.

You be the hot grenade

I'll be the stomach of steel

that catches it

the mouth that exhales smoke

translating fire into speech of many tongues

branches all caressing

from the molten heart

the fevers that make spirits flesh,

up past the barriers of bladed space

far over chariots of darkened matter

and orgasmic information

into blank angelic zones

that smell of broken chocolate,

into the most fertile wound.

All the grime of blown illusions

riding on a cloud of maggots,

inhabiting the thoughts

of a disfigured species,

tearing the sail to shreds

that dripped with captured daylight,

stuck to the hull of reality

with no relief from time.

Teeth on a chain of pink plaster

clicking for an earless breeze.

Corroded walls on limestone

reflections that embroider on the blade

dissection of the ritual assurance

that carried sleepy bones into the grave.

In the curve of winds secured by ghostly circles

the heights of ridged hills

and the smell of cracked rock,

bright eyes are the heat's holder.

The cave cups fire dances

smoke rides a fissure out into the sky.

New blood is paint before it dries.

The bridge of smoke mysteriously retracted

walls that speak through porous images

silk running down a hill of steam.

Ecstasies remembered

in fragments like blades,

sacred without number, lost.