STEPPING AT THE PORTAL OF BUMBLEFOOT

Downbeat of wings; dreamlike states and loss
a small mirror pressed gently through a steep-walled network of black blood
eggs on a dish no need of firearms
tree-shrouded to wait for a breeze and taxi over each child's crib
light is wiggled by patterned sheets
to build a landing field with platforms, ladders, and cubbyholes
in the fabric drunkenly

its good resonance known to drum of a roof gutter
and birds are drowned to the song
olive neurons encode the three-dimensional light fixture--
though I were a piece of paper train
and the rail on the side of the bed and two floating docks blew us in two.

PHANTOM LIMBS HUNGER FROM THE BRINK

The oval window appeared under a pall of writhing smoke
by her bodily need for control cables and fluid lines to the surface alive
towered three times as tall as the bearded young numbers of nurses

and level bombers of piano wire pancaked into the sea
maternal pulse and blood by adding a bomb rack
crest cells slice recordings against the controls to be awakened

to ache miserably of the oxygen through unending daylight
a glider-like shock to the animal's tail, the same light across the icecap
could not shake the clouds born into the body

sees herself trapped in the hold of dark blue robes
the sea of fleece tiny willow and pine-covered
an entire class of faces could go with its fuel

a single tail shock on the past-life person's body
forced by darkness to shed such shackling ceremonies from the wheel

SYNAPTIC TRANSRIVERS OF BABYLON

In the trailing antenna of a nation at war you awaken spontaneously
from a seaplane tender, a hand on painfully cold bars,
father's scrap-metal driven by rubber bands
and with a hole in the wall between the two rooms with birds flapping
and chirping and feathers not to be shackled by a pack of bureaucrats
you must mount a machine and become acquainted with disequilibrium
to seek shade, her red or green bars of light
in their wallpaper patterns; the man with blindsight;
everlasting doors; the kind of cars, furniture,
that vent violent, uncontrollable shapes of music
ice-locked 100 miles away, waiting for a slow, deep cry of welcome

BELL JET

Crumpled wings and broken rotor blades
he rode upward, out of control, until the outward nerve fibers
multiengined over the tropical grassland like outraged beasts,
and the shoestring jungle of the new men, waste dinner in the brightly lit ship

we forget everything, where we are, that the tiny breakaway nation
can come from the sky and their student who felt no pain and died
with an angelic face lawless as his elders

he crossed the coastal mountains by his cracked undercarriages
rang venison, fruit and cream, the wine flowed and glasses clinked; towns
droned across immense open spaces where no TV or nightclub
repeated many times: bell, meat powder, salivation, bell.

------------------

If tassels could bind you in void ducts
and grass water the steps all after
landing like sunlight in the courtyard
of a palace of garbage

you would come down wreathed
by common disguises
an imp in furs

but you hold wheat, apples, a pinch
and deep inside the atom
empty space happening like
an impenetrable light-thicket.

/////////////////

There we went with the letters of our names flailing
into darkness, eternity was told to sit down
in front of the choir

we tore a waltz like silt through paper
out of the eon dragged air
bestilled for tooth shaped caves
where the eras of famous history
collapse into rag ferns
and burnt pussywillow

here the apples fell all
in the same spot one
after the other.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

wall bursts out of a light
the candelabra of arms
geometrically outstretched
all to a halo of the same green sun
bodies painting bodies in the radio

who touches me touches no multitude
I am alone in the crushed shell
of your embracement
dragging a salt tail
over small town roads
that never touched the ocean's lungs

armor grows from skin that dropped its medicine
your beauty is not large enough to hold me
I'll comb your hair with my eyes
from the parched window of a day-stunned airplane
plowing the tusks of my manhood's mask
into your garden earth
buried there without the relatives

the pope of a treehouse
and the seven sails that bring me away
from around the rain world

IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII

see those removed
from that which is old
become ancient
see their broken panorama of eyes
and the emptied river of drug plead:
heal this house, seal off the false divides
play water flute to the drowning mouth

of a failed savior dreaming
freedom from failed disciples
and the desert under the earth
tar twinkling
in the active moment
where apocalypse shrinks
to a tin violet streaked
with doll-stained moons

******((((((***))))))******

moth wings deepen on a matching wall
body cage rises to kiss the paint
where a skeletal train elopes
with a cargo of radiant black

passengers emptied into torn auditoriums
choking on the fire of firebreathers
and loving it
the frames of farm girls
departed from their porches
a silken madness enwrapping
their rooms behind rooms

wasp wings on the backs
of their necks twitching
for the signals of chewing mouths
who pestle the form's
tech-rimmed aurora
without breaking the skin

()))))))))(())))))

I woke up a friend in the darkest afternoon
dreams of post-apocalypse that tormented him
passed through my palms
we walked down a hallway
together that will follow us into death

a girl's simplest touch, the painted corners
that deepen slowly, let me come to you
with something like peace in my hands, he said
I was in a clinic I was manipulated
there were force-mutated human beings
operated on and for a moment in living dream

I was one of them, we were glowing with dirtied
light, we were among the undeserved blessed
who walk, dragging their slashed
numinous unbeings