)()(

two lavenders
magenta and orange
I built myself a throne of magazines
to treasure silence
toss off ecstasy
the emptiness of beauty
two eyes on a rag
beer inside the heart
lung flowers of smoke
a certain pulse sound is waning
from the upper deck
where love won't listen to reason
no commands are coming

two lavenders
magenta and orange
the creatures dancing in canvas
who come out only for my hands
none can keep me company
in my body bent backward
from love and understanding much, too little
the murder of fictional destiny
that they cannot soothe
for they are moving

pulses.  The photoelectric surface is made up
heads and wings and long tails
the sex glands

slow heartbeat
the trachea in the throat

shelled evening
stars hardened in their casts
to watch the tension ascending

Hollyhock instruments and furniture
on the brightwork of boats, the superior vena cava

leaflets that turn red throughout the United States
and a scattering machine that must be split into different beams

each of the smaller tendrils a pattern of the sound on smoke
with five to seven lobes off a mirror standing near

three kinds of tubes: speech made the membrane for teaching caged
birds to sing with each other, creating light and dark

a disklike sucker pad which attaches
their peak in the famous

<*><*>

I turned into a cat.
I ate and moved back and forth on the floor tiles.
Do you love me more?
I believe I will tolerate you for quite some time.

Don't put my affection on a tow-rope.
The whiskers will come around presently.
Yours is to sit and wait.
Mine is the territory, claimed so quietly.

<*><*>

{}{}{}{}

The little girl is dreaming of gold.
Her father is holding a bullet.
They are together under all the winds of the earth.
Shopping carts and pinwheels roam
the scorched, flat terrain without will.

Someone is singing a song for them:
an unextended man, a very sad man.
As he raises his voice from a stone fence roadside,
the fibers of his being are infused with tender prophecy.
From the fracture in his spirit cast,
a healing river meets the many currents.

The embrace goes beyond blood.
Father and singer are one.
Tarnished earth, the choir of melted libraries,
the way the soft weight of the innocent child
hurts the arms that know.

The singing throat, love that wavers
no longer, suffering and still.
They are two men: they learn to talk
and then learn not to talk.
The little girl is dreaming of an unbroken god.

{}{}{}{}

*~*~*~*~*

a lattice shell around the open mouth
and the four other feminine ways
there are, to call me home
wires around the soul bunching

there is a bulwark of stone serenades
in the center of a cemetery
and a beercan, and a dampened cigarette
next to the tree that has seen nothing

and the textbooks, full of distilled valentines,
that will be made from its passing
the mold of crass destiny from a pulp of ancient wood
the mask successful even when broken
the freedom of the will locked up in a bus-stop bathroom

windows are salt swept into corners
a scaffold of chipped floors
a barren place to parse the electricity of death
which the field and the flower could not open
the curve of the last barrier singing against a wind

we anchor the ceiling to a life of chimes
and do not speak of its bombing

*~*~*~*~*

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`

Take my broken body
my trash mind
take my warped creations
my insane mission
take all these for your pleasure
all these for your time unweighed
lash me to your strength and your terror
an instrument of your imaginary galaxies
my fear in your fear
my near-total lack of understanding
gather these unto you
I am your harmonium

~`~`~`~`~`~`~`