Rainbows of black paint

and a crowd of moons

corroding on a silver sky.

Drums under the waterfalls

pounding through the summer steam.

A butterfly's hinges

moving on some knuckles

in this rock-hewn scene.

Crawling out of a grave of flowers

black eyes bright with sight

riding earthly dawns.

Water of washing light,

cleansed blade cutting waves of darkness,

the rub of bones beneath cloaks of steel

leaking quiet sparks.

From the belly of a frozen ocean

comes a cry suppressed

of ages that must find their circuit

for the flames of an unfound day

cooling into architecture.

Round hills blooming

from abysmal swamps

the rouge of southern sky

above shattered parking lots

the grime of deserted rivers

torn metallic fences

like fallen battered wings

of some massive

destroyed thing.

Bulbs of luminous air

glowing from the fever of corpses

who want to come back to life.

I am a child of the abyss.  I took down

the cross of the conqueror.

I removed your worshipful fingers

from my pineal gland

with a flashing knife.

I told you to go back to the desert,

or stay in the city

where I can never come.

Because our language and our ways

have departed from one another,

and there will be no reunion.

What we have now is lives

headed for separate realms.

And what God has separated,

let no man bring together again.

Let it unravel into separate kingdoms,

see what they can conjure.

Let them drink their separate poisons

from their separate stills,

and die the same.

THE CANCELLATION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT

We are expected to become

accustomed to spectacle.

Shaped into a smooth resource

fisted by plastic idols.

Run through the marketplace like fuel.

Used up by limitless fantasy

with no roots in the real.

This is the way, say the lovers

of language, to become pure spirit.

And the corpse of this planet

must be sacrificed to the same ideal.

Those who don't love democracy

must be tortured to death.

Those who hate freedom must

be imprisoned.  This is good.

It is not right that others

benefit from being forcibly civilized,

while we neglect our own people:

they too must taste the joy

of political reality.

We plug our strings into the wall

and let the ropes of fuzz undulate.

I strike a bass with sparks

you open up the rain

of electric fray.

The streets outside are piling up

with fragrant wrecks.

The bricks drip dust from grinding.

We tap the drums with fairy dust

and watch the winding

wheels of pounding ways

that sweep this room across the sky

landing in reactive spires.

If I find you in some obscure

channel of purgatory,

I will cling to you and we shall rise,

over the smoking theaters

and resculpted ruins

of a dreamed city

we will ascend to realms

that do not yet exist.

We must imagine

all those rooms afresh.

The lolling tongues of cloud-births

must come down.  Let the wet sex

pick up all the ash and wash it

into the river.  Let all the afterlives

let go and gush.

Feel the hush of old gods.

Chain links rattling on the shore

that feed on drunken vertebrae.

Rituals of sacrifice that never

bring a ringing dawn of dawns.

We are not pawns,

and all great kings are gone.

My bones are moving

closer to that song.

GREG

Your verses have endured, my friend.

The young still hear

the rumble of your voice.

In a world of cruel and murderous pride,

your humility has made you immortal.

Your open door is remembered.

Because you never praised yourself,

and always elevated others,

your legacy is limitless: now

you have the highest place of esteem.

You gave us your whole heart

without restraint.  Now

your spirit resides

in the way of liberation,

in the way of all committed poets,

in the way that the broken remain.