CONCRETE CANALS

The new womb is cut in half
I surround myself with people
just to sit and watch them die

light flows from the television; it feels
as if the very winds are sapped of savagery
by its rectangular river glowing.

I can see through lunacolored chainlink
all the patches of dead grass
where last summer I dropped my guitar
in a fit of drunkenness

and pines like tentpoles toppled on me
homophobics picked up by wifepolice
in the belly of the soil we all

in the belly of the soil belching we croak
our little laments into digital mole-tunnel,
lips pushed back raw to the gums
by the oldest special effects.

The small surf lapping at a slant
of the concrete wakes me want to kiss
wet tiny shards of glass
on the gravel everywhere

where this species that shares my blood
walks treading on their foul products,
rebuilding the robot maids
that guide its days.

The old womb is cut in fourths
I become the genitals of a mythical creature
the kitchen table is made to float
up hard against the sharpening
of my elbows; light is not alive

the creatures under it are eating
the crawl of neon across
ashes woven together
of an old pillowcase
concrete canals
are steering a fish for the mouth
to the absence of our one moon.

WEEKEND DREAMS

For brushing the highway clean
with a broom of horse tail
I was given in my cupped hands
clamshells writhing with
licorice-black maggots

a rainbow trapped triangular
in an apricot tin
four amphibious rectums in the realm of
forehead just above my scorched lashes

a wife with chrome insides to steer
toward the drive-in movie through
forests of vines that no longer need trees

and alleyways of coral no longer supported
by oceans, marble streetlamps bulbed
with lizard bellies taking on the light
of foreign stars: all glowing in the aftermath
of a torn wide sun, radios going wild.

Bikini bottoms puffing up so faintly
hung on antennas in what wide kisses earth
breathes up through concrete
slow to return to the death in a hot hard parking lot
crucified sideways on information television

holding a small dog in your small dog hands,
a morning we share, heavy as a bad spacecraft;
plowed highways slam into the sides of coffeeshops;
old kettles rattle a fresh hard-on's last shackles.

I see a radiant world coming out
from the black core between
the yellow petals of a susan
flower. I see from the charcoal heart
a silver glitter, fragments from
deep through the stem deep
through the whole round earth and out
the other side and far beyond
into a universe being drained
to collapse
its off-white purity
like a new bedroom being killed
with echoes.

I see a girl in multi-colored dress
(though these colors are like
no other shade I've seen
in gardens of before) stepping out
from the center of the flower, and as
she carefully avoids stepping on
a praying mantis she moves towards me,
her every freckle and cell a healing
particle, her flesh-petals apart
from all other plants, she holds me
to my roots in the earth, that grow
beyond the earth, my eyes that look
from behind my eyes and all around
the goldenrod twitch
from dry season to dry season
until they begin to bleed
their own version of water.

The shingles turn to creature skin,
the creature they are is new
under a new sky, we are tortured
by our happiness, I see
the glint near and intimate, of
the girl's world melting down her eyes
the girl's world melting down her dress,
the girl's world is my hands, these
other objects are my hands, also she lives
in all the things that connect, I die
to all the things that disconnect.

I'm suspended somewhere deep
in a moderately huge machine,
with too many arms & legs, too many

orifices enwrapping too
many fingertips. My core
pulled out like a frog's scalpelled
spine.

And I leave again & again
until my leaving sticks
and my staying replaces my center in

a gathering of slim-toothed goats,
over & out, 2 big bears & a jumpsuit
drawing too much
cartoon heat
for the silence of all beauty
to manhandle.

where the blind lose all evidence of triangles
lightheaded businessmen walk
in constant sneakers treading on the rhythm
of the rhythm of the rhythm of the rhythm.

while I climbed a weeping willow
covered in hot rain & little paper dragons.

oh you have so little color
in your movements how
the shopwindows steal
your whole frame & face
while you are looking at looking at looking at.

in your first backyard
there will be a woman

with her arms outstretched
gripping stalks of sunflower

lightest breezes heavier
than all the weight at her center

one rooster out of three
struts with a bloody comb

he left his blood
and the blood of his brothers
on the peel of a young birch

a battered coathanger
holding a huge rose

the woman's picked him up
to stroke his bloody feathers

he has thirty hens to pleasure
here's a few verses before you collect the eggs

stories for you & the claws
on the rooster's thumbs

things born deep in fire
return to the furnace

a rain of angry hands upon the airport
piles of multicolored helmets
in front of government houses.

a haircut for all trees near to our channeled
electricity, one thousand bees
clotted in the air like a flash of TV
static all over, for hot orange hours
on the porch, extraneous nipples exposed
to the useless sun
to the useless moon

the one local satellite hovers
near all weather-causing stations
in a hurtful mirage.

the many hands win nothing
with their protest-worship
the great machine gun
continues to dominate
the gentlest air.

a rain of larger and larger nothings
on the lightyear-dampened sun
receding to make room for its younger