The curving forms of emptiness
have flattened out.
High windows soak in the black night.
Nobody sings to the unsupported air.
I am holding a jock strap stuffed with milk
carefully to guard its fountain drain.
Chairs and tables spread their legs
in each other's crossfire.
Pianos muffled at the end forks
of lengthening halls.
Keys that clang the backs of wrists
and do not deposit the spine.

I am charging through the careful wreck
of a blanked-out library,
peeling a live receiver
from the buttons that nudge my spirit
on a declining wall.
And the cloudburst of glittered feathers
coming from a shot-out loudspeaker
is just for me.

The ones who marked me hate me,
their forms are tangling the fence
I've made on a high border,
foot soles slapping long subway steps,
eyes inked into a cracked foundation,
hat bands feathered low on their understanding kites,
scars laid out in plaster that have mapped their way,
back tattoos that replace a sky's chunk of spine
hook deep in the gelatin that is left
and the celestial weave.

Plastic bullets and glue pistols stored within the genetic cell
lights coming across the pasture of frost-shattered rock
anchored to a limy cup, flashing gold and silver like animals
the magic realm shelf covered with green stream beds
giant clams and water millions
a great pollen blown series to the female sperm
the equatorial convergence with rushing torrents
a sudden pour that roar down the parched canyons
bowl worn rocks and cracked deserts are not complete
cement lake flooring dims the sun; these are the great
edges of its hardness

PILTDOWN LUCY AND THE SOCIETY OF THE ROSY CROSS

The warm climate design and energy philosophies
tick slowly in the silence unto their planned house
the frostbitten folk of great fall dimensions swirl
snow, split-rail pines sag lordly
ermine capes krack hem around the mountain country fart
the sky fills with the grey cotton wipe to feed
and the smell is as palpable as simmerin cattle
whip cream mysteries of ecstatic religious experience
cold blueberry soup
one tablespoon pinch of salt
sugar

Thrill eye
(that's me)
your flung flower
pacing a road you glazed and ran
and fell hard on
bathing in blasted worlds
the dust of scattered men
pine blanket bingo
the blue tar of sacked hills.

Reddening piles of twilight rags
the low gleam of arid stairwells
circling rafters and high beams
hands dash on a balcony railing
overlooking the kingdom
smoking and thinking time
arcs over these hallways
time
demands our hold on one another
increase like leaves.

Ghosts are in my life,
some do more than whisper
and some are falling,
rooms are vacant
with their wired voices,
they are threatening death
with its gripless grasp,

some love my mailbox
and some love my involuntary headset,
some recognize my yielding fade
some see the remaining spasm,
sometimes I use their whole alphabet on me
like a wound being scratched,
sometimes I need their silence
like a worldwide bomb.

Seashores lagging to the tide that feels them
harmonies half sunken in a field of brass knobs
under the net gone flying
in the sky that permed and quilted
their unfolding through metal
clasp on clasp and carbon on irritating carbon
tracks on a fading wheel
braided wheat in the ruts
as it climbs space and tattoos a bleeding dragon;
witless lashing, fiery breath
on the fish man's trash can:
the burning of mystical flesh
from its instrument's mouth.

Green helicopters
lowering netted soil,
layered moss
waves of earth
daffodils trampled in paper;

trunks in lacquered yardsides
pushing corners into painted alleyways
crooked high places
tilted hats and eyes under the wind upended
in delicate shivers of glass
and stubbed-on bottlecaps

foot-treads laced in frozen mud
sky scraping blades
high tops and antennas
all growling at the untouched moon.

The beast of gulls peripheral grazing,
hollow leaves for the genus of flowers
paper-whites; late bloomer, human by my big graflex camera,
I snowshoed to a winderness telephone booth locking antlers far out
(without frightening the majesty of him, turn the lamb around)
light changed the wilds and I
golden eagle diving directly
a fine ram at the rim
these feathered travelers of some hope
a corridor of cottonwoods parklands and prairies
beyond the lake a snow of mallards
a footstool of aspen-covered bluff
from the stubble of wheat
heralding the coming of the female
their first adventure

The great spirits are going,
going with a handshake mirror,
going with an abyss in the heart
or a screaming error,
going with a poisoned collar,
a hanging neck that is
the mark of death,

The great spirits are coming,
coming with a valued remorseful wail,
coming with a punched-up glossolalia,
dropping change and paper to a swift bucket,
with a slithering gown red
that holds the circuitry of origin
in the building of an accident world.

Octaves pouring out of the ground,
symmetry in motion,
destabilized text spilling
from the top of a smashed head:
acres of rot in the core
of a baby plum tree's trunk,
shivering and seeming near,
fogged in a thicket of alphabets
hugging my boots
and their precious mud to my chest,

fully out-maneuvered
by an unmoving thing,
both inside and outside of me:
engulfed by islands,
their breakage and surf and invitations,
boat landings for an infamous
and naked ass,
the flat and ragged stone
under the water
singing to familiar feet.

Fetching the long path
from the thaw
scampering blood vessel
lumpen poet returning
from the aching woods
holding a wishbone twig
and a pants-sized thatch of moss
having stumbled to glory,
having heaved and won a grey goatee,
a staff for dowsing
and declaring spaces named,
his fondest error

Horns make a hollow trunk
burrowed halls and paint spaces
belts bright and dim operators
tilling borrowed soil; his teeth
a mask of time and tobacco
only the wit's eye
that looks from the clouds
glinting sight
he said he would be with moisture

Taking out the stick to mark
a cornered goal, a blue chalk
mark above each eyebrow,
sorting mushroom tops and stems
you sit in sweatpants and jersey smoking
the lichens of an old stone wall.

TO HYDE ARGON AND HELIUM PARK

Muskoxen and lemmings
cherry bombs and roman candles
in the arms of spiral galaxies
the bricks and ivy of the ruined church twilight
ivory blossoms tipped with brown body of women

our sex is so deplorable that it is our duty to break the government
the blues of a sky shades of grey technologists
dark foliage greens, dark tones; same way the loom follows its weaving
gamblers, pollsters and atoms from these skylights their power reversed,
a small aperture and large f-number very solar in clotheslines,

numerals for numbers; designs in the studio where gentle breezes
are converted to depth depth depth of field, letters for unknown numbers;
the buckshot patterns on royal road to geometry
that astronaut mathematics should carry crackers
their organs of sense and perception throughout the universe, however different
the springboard for a pinhead dry in a few short hours.

Long skinny windows
like gills in the halls
of the big time art building
parasitic whales
inking like darkfish
wall to wall swilling
bouncing eyes and hips
struggling to the reflective wheels
and being churned under
for suds that bear their name
furious shanks and railway tracks
slicked and loaded
with a reeling heart
where the icicles drip
dark brown rock walls
and the headphones rasp
and the mind falls out
of its fast circuit
dripping current and lashing hard
against the lips of a balcony
where our saviorette sits
drinking a cigarette.

Over smashed clusters
vagrant families, rootless trunks
lying by the girders of a fallen system;
hollow rods with faint flowers
packed into the travels of the breastbone
building steam in my long legs
to walk over wires
and oily dishes' thumb-sized swirling;
cat's paw split in a bent-over eye
quick heaps of falling water
at the ends of huddled halls
sun in the cracks of a grated wall
piercing the poet's vest
with a varied keyhole.

Skies on tap with falling dials
snowbank sprayed with black steam
bamboo trunks through the ribs
of a singing man
blonde days in the blade fan
wagging an entire body like a tail
stacked cushions of appearance
on a sagging house
foundation sounding grit in teeth
a smoldering wilderness in one good eye
the belly and the collar
each a dish scrubbed once too much
fins of a weapon face sprouting
feathered jewels
on the carpet of the beard's rug.

Doors in the backhand slap
lid's inertia of white motion
yellow dipped supermoon
over the dome of death
yanking highways
out of the obnoxious sky
planting dagger seeds
in a sea of soil
flag's metaphysical flesh
ain't worth shit.

Posts on the way to ascending cloud
with a love of violent spirits,
and they with me dancing
and raving fake light,
and the evil of them beauty,
and my own evil beautiful as a jewel,
and the water pulsing in the middle planet,
and the others pulling.

Dead sea deserts bloom
somber grey rock that makes the vast drying forms
churning up fallen retreats for men and women
the earth with a layer of child-birth beds
the post of lady-in-waiting police
were drawn up on two rainy seasons
ridges over their eyes blossom
and frozen flowers of every shape
and gardens of stone parasols
their bones claim that a swimmer is safe
as long as he stays under the ancient tales
the animals, small, burrowing creatures
may go through life without drinking water;
the wind-harsh, soilless terrain shaped by lack of rain
the land of the sun bare lands
sequinned are innumerable stars.

My malevolent insignia
crowds the baby borders
brights lichens to paint posts
boffing stumps with mushroom hollows
bicycle wheels on long-throated roads
humming past pots burst in soil and roots
pillars of sensation, big tails of slim-led
boring regulated traffic, sun bursts's digital slime
and the platform aftermath:
vines on the porch steps
calling to brine and steaming mornings;
licking hailstones tiny as text
from a pocket gravestone.

Arms and armor gorge
sweet-water lakes and streams, the springs and underground hunger-strike
water tables layer on layer who thereupon picked me
the soil into rock curiosity
the frail leaf mouldered to anchor in the outer harbor
our women went forth to war to the god of property
I refused to go with the men police
we steamed the white star tender
one woman from a food driven into lungs
the enforcing of the infamous law
two huge grey warships transformed into furies
two women, spray drenched dashed across speechless
conveying me, the general public.

Fielded by mitts of thieves
in a golden tallboy:
tossed by the rain
heavy into bowing trees, a painter
crusty fingertips clutching dugout steps
listening to a heated shower;
the stripes of a visionary
experience in the emergency light;
stem on fire for a rose canvas
bleeding vacant air.

Stillness in the belly of the noon
like a knife in water.
She swan hands,
tugging apron canvas
stretched across a dim wall
back-plated in fake flower wires
snagging the undergrowth of mildew rugs
ripping and breathing.