I suffer lapse after lapse.

I put on the charming mask,

but it always cracks.

Darkness pools in me

and tries to compete with death.

The raging seas are tied

in a daisy chain

around my raging dance.

I invite the lumpen toads,

the fluidly curvaceous doves,

to fill the bleachers of bones

and cheer for my flowery devouring.

Bombs that are muffled in me

explode elsewhere.  Ruins of gold

decay on my refracting table.

I will never be peacefully inhabited.

My dreams are the dreams of slaves

who never accepted their fate.

You have made me an immovable nothing.

You have made me an immovable emptiness

and yet you fall into me

like one who needs to be drowned.

The instability of yes

and the numbing no

congealing schizophrenic soul.

Kingdoms opened at a touch

closed down within invaded afternoons

leaving me in clouds of crumpled brown leather

fighting for the eyes that led me here

to find the stamp on a dragon's tail

swishing over gorgeous fortresses

turning air to pink reactive water

joining infant smiles to a sky beseeching spine

as the lightning picks grape from vine.

In a mossy cabin in a lunar beam

I will drink the rainwater

from a metal sleeve

my veins will be prepared

for the purpose of a thousand warring shadows

to chip away the master plan

and leave me with a sacred fragment

smitten with lips of clay,

and a tongue beyond description

offices abandoned in high cubes of glass

glinting with the parchments of the past

from a green ditch I see the signal

of a disintegrating signature

blowing smoke rings from the void

its cursive scars had torched

all reflecting blues from Satan's porch.

Black soil pours the marrow's bone

into exploding green

and the wings that sting.

Stained water filling up

the cups of frozen hands.

Smoke scrawling in tiny tendrils

that do not expand,

the beauty of abnormal behavior.

Light in labyrinthine channels

swelling like the jelly of the fruit

that gives endless dreams.

Vines have carried my bones away

evaporated eyes float out to misty eternity

sand of burnt flesh licking a globe of glass.

While symphonies crawl into match boxes

and the claws of cats walk water

in serene pink tubs,

I sit on a cartoon couch

that swallows me up with tongues.

Crystal teeth send sparks and splinters

over the machines whose gears they chew

bodies filling up with conscious glue.

SATAN

Satan came to Earth after an absence of several thousand years, and found himself a famous scapegoat. Confronted by suspicious mankind, He noted that their gods had not served them particularly well. "I see that the rumors are true: no wickedness of mine in Hell could ever compare with the princes of religion here. And since my kingdom then cannot serve its ultimate function, I have abandoned my forces to their wiles and resigned myself to a term of fresh experiment on Earth." And mankind, having tired from so many millennia of torment under their deities, was surprised to find that he seemed a most reasonable man, and much like themselves. "I will play God" he now proclaimed, "but if you tire of my reign, thou art welcome to try and dethrone me, as I would enjoy the struggle; and I like you when you are in a revolutionary mood, and willing to suffer." Mankind, restless and skeptical, contemplated this when he further proclaimed: "I see that your numbers are diminishing; that you are ruled by the old and the corrupt, they that practice the white arts, the arts of false holiness; and yet their reign has wearied you, as much as it has wearied them; neither can overthrow the other. And so this is my covenant to you: I am going to remove all your control mechanisms. I am going to show you how to unleash chaos in your women, and from them how to renew it in yourselves." And mankind, though stunned and bereft of all religion, seemed fascinated by these ideas. "You will build altars, but the shape and meaning of them is all left up to you. One warning I give you only: above all, I desire to be entertained, and to remain entertained. I understand that the reign of the Gods has left you dull and commonplace, so I will be patient with you at first: but thou must entertain me, and entertain me well. I trust you will." And the masses, unsure of what to do, went about in search of fresh costumes.

In the beginning, the image was with God. And the image was of the feminine: and the feminine was life. The Word, Logos, was given to man that he might use it to pay proper tribute to the feminine. But man made an idol of this tool, and prostrated himself before the Word: he gave it all his worship, and the feminine, neglected by action in favor of speech, began to wither up. The man noticed her weakness, and invited her to lay down beside him and join him in worshipping the Word. "It will give us strength" he said. "It will show us the way" he said. And although Eros had her doubts, she was now too weak to resist the rhetorical temptation. She lay down beside him, not touching, just side by side in the dust. And the name of this story is the death of the west.