May the data pools be smelted

by the human spirit burning

in the shackles of this handmade hell

let the cuckoos of an

endless morning dwell.

On the beach of bones

where spirits paint in smoke

fizzing with green ink

the chains of space are tied with pleasure knots

and echoed pains of unknown histories

forever in the rapture of their deaths

skin and flash to decorate the trade winds

steaming wheels of steel that never cared

gears run on captured blood that won't cry out

all the knowledge of distorted names

the descendants of a motionless game

hairy valley where the cleansers shave.

The breeze fondles its secret crevices

with green things,

is groomed to be a greater wind

fleeced of easy curvature

billowing like the blood of the world.

The orchestra of blades

proceeds through trees

that will not lean its way

this time.

The rumble of liquid fire

bright ferocious tongues

from many mouths.

I cracked my head on northern ice

and burned my feet down south.

These vines are in my veins like crowds.

ASAGRAUM

I keep company with my witches,

and my witches comfort me.

We paint memories with black

and purple stripes.  We reach

a highway strewn

with secondhand cigarettes.

The ground lifts off

like a rug with rockets.

Towers gleam around 

the emperor's ring of gardens.

Their windows blink

with secret bohemian signals.

We see the strength of a painted wound

in vaporous space.

TOBACCO ZONE

I carry an apartment on my back

imprinted by the dancing feet

that made this town your street

the floorboards wrap my spine

in wax and shine

I lumber through this world with gone

Greg Devlin's ghost,

looking for a lost bohemia.

Birds in the rafters

riding heavy metal hair

branches whose forks liquidly multiply

extending warm wet growth of grandeur

cooling through mercurial sunsets

roots coiling beneath the cord

of connected skies.

STONES OF THE SOUTHERN SKY (after Neruda)

Red jasper, beautiful

brick red blood of earth,

bright and rough rock of persistence,

stone of my mother who plants

in the darkest dirt,

stone of our humble ancestors,

known by our Chilean cousin.

Pablo, your hands are companion

to omnipotence now.

These stones are for you and for me,

each splinter of chert, each undissolved

dramatic cluster, dark quartz closely packed

from its molecules outward,

jasper for Greg Devlin's hands,

chert for mine and Pablo's,

we make a time-resistant fire,

we make the blood of man create rock

in these holes of boiled dust,

stones of light

sailing through constellations,

changing the maps of space

sky seen from a southern depth

stones deep in a nurturer's net

bright stones of June's December,

January's April rent.