Many of us saw the light.

It blew our eyes out.

We saw nothing else

for a long time.

There must have been

some other gods, some

other shade of reality.

I remember the fire escape

glinting out beyond

my tin of baseball cards.

That was in the holy place,

the place of money exchanges.

Weeping and strange

movements of tongues

as the golden dishes of cash

were passed and pocket lint

was turned to alchemical silver.

I was pulverized by the light,

and left behind with the light

for a long time, long enough

to fuck with the light.

I learned.  The light had turned

me into darkness burned.

THE CANOPY OF AIR

The pages of a tightly coiled spiral

you can find the galaxies of outer space animals

see ctenophore

the distance to a rectangle

enclosing perfectly symmetrical spheres

clouds of gas and dust three thousand feet

eight thousand meters deep

spin turbulent configurations

with the waters hairlike hard protective

two colliding galaxies pass through each other

at some trackless crossroad

dark intruding opaque matter

the six hundred feet of water above the seafloor

space of lies where the seafloor

is no more than something in my brain

bioluminescence of the galaxies,

the stars within them

a form of camouflage one mile from the shore

the amount of plant and animal life

in a given area used by most comb jelly

architecture for the life he was born to live

indoor outdoor linen enveloped in the powder

feeling the timeless southern textures.

MURKA

I am a banished westerner

who remains in the west.

I am no longer a guest

in my father's house,

much less a son.

This family's God is not

my God, but I am his Satan.

He cast me out of heaven

with a sneer, but I came

back with a black horse

and a burger king crown.

I wrote the poems of His

empire's death, with a wet

crayon.  I watch the gaps

between the verses yawn:

that's where the Goddess goes.

I slit His throat

while She irons His clothes.

The goblet full of engine oil

stains your teeth with sacred grease.

You belch balloons whose rubber skin

is tattooed with a money museum.

The corridors of stale treasure

extend through the profundity

of an empty galaxy.

They injected themselves with fat,

ate gold and died,

and not one higher being cared.

They made a long documentary

about the process.

They were satisfied by their influence

upon their own decay.

They added complexity to their disease,

and celebrated that.

Their own eyes

got tired of watching them.

Their blood revolted against their veins.

They made themselves iron bodies

and plastic minds.

The new product

was more democratic than ever.

It sang the songs on time

and kept them clean.

You drink your petrol drink

and lean on leaning things.

Your conscience is the way

their sawblade sings.

The ship of clouds

is filling up with patterned rooms

swirls of finely cut artful containment

interpenetrating panes

that lock with roots

to push a rock residing flower.

In a feathered tin can

tunnel underground apartment

I am visited continually

increasingly radical females

bring all the fruits of vapor's lust

a kingdom in this raging rust

that sprouts from skeletons aging.

Hand me my kaleidoscopic knife

and my drag police deceivers

let angelic oars dip into my soul

boats of metaphysical substance

glide across my liquid universal interiors

the heart of which is in your posterior.

I tap on a glass dome

over a faintly ringing town

set my backpack down

on steps of glowing marble

I hear paradise calling

above these knots of concrete

doubled echoes kiss

the swirls of ears

around the misty ceiling

panels slide like ice dividing

theaters of quiet light

kept crackling for fragments

of divinity that doesn't need repose

paths pouring from an unseen rose

fed by magnets of a frothing fountain.

Black veils touched with yellow sauce

tie dyed tunnels through softly sighing trees

the swaying rays of elevated streets

beds drummed by fever bodies

halls creaking with passionately painted rafters

doors fluttering like massive insect wings

bells ringing on ascendant porches

rails of snakeskin covered metal

racing to a hungry moon.