EXPLICIT LUCIDITY

You were programmed for death,

not for transcendent grandeur.

The dreams of your forefathers

were linked to an encompassing cancer:

and only the cancer has grown.

Their descendants dream of renewal,

but they are not willing

to die to themselves.

Thus their dreams are futile:

they dream of rebirth

from outside themselves,

and allow their souls to become helpless,

assigned to imprisoned flesh,

just barely kept alive

for the annihilating hive

in its escape from reality.

And where does their escape lead?

To darkness, to the void, to withering

depravity: all the torments

they threaten to inflict on solitude,

and they suffer them all

in an oblivious mass,

unable to withstand

what they've become.

UGLY AMERICA

Your women are not beautiful to me.

Your streets of filth lead nowhere at all.

Your money is nothing: you have

nothing to offer.

You bet everything on a disgusting

social illusion: now you have

no reality left.  Everyone sane

has deserted you by following

a higher spirit from within.

Your beauties talk nonsense

until they turn everything stale

including themselves.

They eat drugs from shiny vials

and fall down in sleepy rows.

Then you wonder why they're ugly.

They were never beautiful enough

for you anyway.

Everyone must be sliced into pieces

and put back together in a shape

that your dullness can deal with.

YELLOW JASPER

Yellow jasper stone,

I found you in a pile of likeness.

I picked you for the indent

you gave my thumb.

Your quiet caramel light

will not go out.

Coins disappear around you

like dying stars announced.

My palm needs your rough edge

and your smooth pocket.

We both come from a natural rocket

in the swift alchemical slums of space.

I put you on my belly and wait

for you to melt into me.

I dream without my mouth

of your river taste,

of your imperturbable place.

And slowly you bring

sweat to my tongue.

My body's been absorbing bug fragments,

lumps of alcoholic psychosis,

ghosts of dead friends,

diseases of queens that I'm

honored to have as one of the last

fallen princes of the sexual revolution,

thank you ladies, spirit's

growing finally to tow

this physical fragment along...

I used to think of Allen Ginsberg,

now I think of Gary Snyder,

maybe I should study those

notebooks on nature.

But the two in one

could be this creature.

It needn't be either/or,

and Ginsberg assents.

We're all getting fucked

in our tents.

I see a duck chasing a butterfly.

I see many lessons in the grass.

The butterfly bounces

off the duck's round beak

and escapes.  She is dark,

beautifully dark as the duck is blonde,

with a bright check mark

on each wing.

The duck is briefly disappointed,

but she pecks at the earth

to find something new.

The butterfly finds the upper tier

of a fig tree's branches.

She does not brag, she does not

need to brag.

The birds beneath the bridge become

a whirlpool in a concrete well.

The sun is torn by vines

that never stop growing.

The machine sky is cracked

by fire and water.  Numbers drip

from a frenzied calculator.

The pressure of swollen galaxies

up against solidifying darkness.

Cemeteries celebrate outside

the shops and silent stadiums.

The forests growl and rumble

drinking rivers into rooted depths.

Torn cloth of the infinite

give up your dressing gown

spirit braids between worlds.

THREE SWAMPMAIDS

After a torrential rain

my favorite swampmaids

find me in my deep backyard

smoking near the steaming forest

correcting a political essay.

I pass the joint and slide

the notebook under a tent flap,

they tease my fine abstracted state

and pull my dick out of my pants

to resume their entertainment.

Swamptessa, Tychia and Bloodteeth

come to me for poetry,

the sport that men provide

and the milk that makes children.

We beat the long grasses down

to curving strands

in the twilight of my worldly errands.