Sad centipede of gleaming brass grandeur

strange visitor of salad haunts

leering from darkened glass

at the foot of a mountain's milk crate roots

machines humming with madness

stacked flowers and their stalks

the whole scene a banner that is always leaving

I stride the steak-fed conveyor belts

between jagged perfumes

calling to the sacred calendar that's gone

like a soldier fallen far in lilacs

I leave little notes along the ropes

in this gauntlet hangar

hoping the web is soaked

with edible sleep

and the petals are stroked

with a sound of falling embers

in the red part of the pet dark

swamps crowned with high ornate

cathedral space ships

and an arc of file cabinet tombstones

around the articulate scar.

Oceans of prickly pine dunes

lines of radiant dye adorning pale ditches

water tracing falling planets in the galactic

starfall.  Memories cranking

in the worm of consciousness

like a new set of metallic guts.

Sunlight burning up the skin suit

paths growing from the crash

of a spiny pear on receptive pavement.

Settlement edges nudging each other

like fevered limbs bereft of nest

long pipes in convoluted configurations

to draw the eyes of the depths

the fissured beauty of the abyss

the navel of a golden idol

spouting holographic scrolls

of interstellar maps.

Planes of granite library cliffs and ledges

connecting like the unlit lungs.

The wellspring of dust

at the root of my tongue

alleys of storm washed days

shining with moss struck fire escapes

the glitter of frozen water

on fingertips of pensive statues

beams leaning on antique doorways

mice-like people in their furtive stations

still laboring under the fish eye light

the boat-weight of accumulated feathers

flashing hunger at a ringed moon

while the fences lean

to a pale center of gravity

and hot coals rain out of the mouth

of a high metallic tunnel

still smoking in the funnel's blades

that have opened from my dreams

bronze cacophonies made round with streams.

The blood path

through the desert calls

the air rides

up to a secret channel

beads of shrieking flesh

are baptised in glittering rows

with oil of mercury

strings aching in the meat heart

of a desecrated sun

spinning discs

bounce off a frozen chicken

and distribute acidic letters

lungs fall in resounding buckets

clay is combed over by blades

and made to sleep in the oven

for a handprint's shade.

Curlicues of browsing cloud

carve doors into the earth

where I descend and kiss

the figures hacked in stone

who move slower than

my fading companions

melted by the ooze of the present hour.

The eye of shifting galaxies

sees my hair in the well

a star mangled from

some gone flesh

and does not clench at it.

A painter finds me in the coining void

I reach for her dishes

in their rind of echoes

and her penetrating brushes

the wide metallic vents

sweep all appearances away

but the signs and their scars

remain.

Glass dancers are ringing

bells in a frosted glade

stone streams

and their dribbling fragments

of fragrant water

the bridge rails in broken dreams

a cloud of carefully arranged cushions

the offices of educated madness

in dead fish light

the delicate wires of colored fabric

dragged through delicate streets

orbs rise with eyes uninhabited

scans of the light that can burn

ribbons of thought police blown

from thoughtful air conditioners

scum flag flown from the pyramids

a froth of sabotaged speech

acidic on the planks and rays

of a monster mask melting on

the final wall, a fist of curling halls.

Rags of bitter light

torn across the hillsides,

tombs of stacked and lettered linen

tongues breathing on tormented waters

the seasons distilled in limbs

that work a sarcastic machine.

Suds gushing over roots

that have let go their plumage of offshoots,

scalps piling up on rock

that peers into the brain.

Bells drifting over strings

in the dark's heartland

violas giving birth to chrome

tar-smooth paths

with a gird of roses

climactic deaths leading back

to a sinewy egg.

I write the poems of a demonic lobster.

The bows of colored light,

the filth of life,

I am stained with it.

Slabs of waxed wood float by

with rows of discarded shoes.

Branches speak in harmony with water

rocks in a ragged line

leading to a solar waterfall.

Time's broken, it can't

set up camp.

The traces of cathedral ribs

recede into the bedroom's rim.

The prayers of shifting outlines

float and thrive

through the sexes of unmoving shrines.

The first leaf is

a web of hives.

Fried walkways

with wax leaves glinting

hero of the big

grease trash can,

grinning desperado

glowing with the salt

of disintegrated worlds,

staring upward from many graves

many bright rectangles

fevered sets of eyes

that have never gone out

doors of light ripping down

the machinery of night,

switches flipped that sing

to long indifferent cords

while soft lamps

are smoking and talking,

black crows cawing

on a spliff scarred windowsill,

chair turning

in a polished impossible void,

the sun as a rose that never moves

is a death I can't fake,

the steel of days down the drain

paws back to my loaded cell,

I can't leak rays on arcs

that bend in the rain,

my leash is frayed with travel

on a torso ranked beyond

somewhere where hot dogs are cooking

and coffee is cooled

on cuboid embers of locked water,

I am sitting on a crate

that comes to lambent ooze.

Burning bridges decorate the night

the stars excrete

drippings of twisted firmament

the paths of tainted light

entangle trees and grasses

the rubble of civilized corners

where the spirit could briefly glow

eating static from decaying particles

electric vines with many voices

drowning each other in metallic water.

I joke with a scarecrow

I untie many disembodied boots

shelve books with varnished pages

letting the silence eat the threads

that are buried in quiet blood

and unattached sacraments

gone bleating in the chain linked void.

Another town rips through my stomach.

A ring of metal spires

rises through a pool of white paint

spurting volcanic red.

The sky sheds its alphabet of skin

the desert sands comb my head

my eyes fade into stone

and look out

from a dream of nowhere

fate snoring on rubber wheels.

Yellow leaves laying

on a land of pine

with no sentient spectre.

Vein that yields

with its flow of grasses

clustered cattails

bursting with webs of

cold renegade light

bent fuzz of a northern blight.

It's a cold blue afternoon sunrise

in the irrational afterworld.

I multiply the silences within me

but then they fill with figures.

Their eyes and limbs light up

with the symmetry of Earth

rough hewn in its untender circuits

bone with its mask of flesh

holding bone to bone.

Still I hang on to pages

crashed by music

and the last great

grinning ballerinas of entropy

wedding rosary stones

to a seamless sky,

their pierced authority

akin to mine.

I watch the grains of matter

split open like hatching eggs,

ant heads with demonic helmets

electric humanoid bodies

the pin-up for a skyscraper's ribs

while I make the missing music

unseen by these marauders

for now.

Ice resounds with reluctant light

in its finely petalled slices

maps of the love that was spent

its many pillars and frozen waves.

On the cusps of many agitated ripples

the pull-strings linger

like the tassels of fallen angels

multiplying in a spoon of earth.

Beams panning over empty waste.

Playful clouds dancing on magnetic girders

between abandoned trails of time.

Reality is pretty, but eternity is very pretty.

God makes the streams outrun the dancers

while the ethereal banners separate like smoke.

I am mated to the pines

that climb ruddy hills,

to magnolias shining

through years that fly like paper.

Lines of salt vibrating

over doorways crossed by peacock souls

through the restful poles.

I refuse the ersatz blessing of purity.

Leaves of an alarming freshness

dangle in the air where

the soil was tainted.

Leaves mingle with the lines

they paint on the soul.

I deny the ersatz offering of deliverance.

The sky's veins dangle berries

of sweet celestial blood

to the willing mouth

in no other world.

I deny the ersatz blessing of sanity

gently, at the hour of the blue door,

in a yellow headdress screaming my name

to a nuked and sleeping mirror,

with the beauty of an ending

staked out through an imaginary path.

Dark angels painted with milk

thawed quick by lightning veins

that strike from imprisoned cores

elaborate fortresses

of tie dyed hair.

Bulbs rising from steam rolled walls

eyelashes of sharpened steel

emerging from a cube of steam.

Plates of rattled lands

shimmering with eerie microcosms.

My hollow hand and yours

severed at the wrists

gripping what was missed

by vacant bodies and a gone mist.

SUGAR IN THE RUINS

Colors dripped on a fallen chimney

glass blinking in shattered fragments

with the stars that have fallen slowly

on black water's lit nets

and soaring rows of apartment porches

frozen leaves in whirlpool walls

around the crumpled bright machines.

Let me fuck you in the channels of the rain

let me inhabit your black shiny hairs

with pinpricks of attentive kisses

reverberate between the pines

and the reach of their needles

eat the tawny blanket

and the chains of delicate luminescence

let me fill your ass and show you who I am.

AMERICANO

Black rainbow of night

show me the electric

letters and what price

sell me the ascent over death

in a blinking basket

paint me with intelligent ashes

cast your swift ironic spell

Green skies

where the ultraviolet's warped,

bodies painting stone

with bloody sweat,

the churning of fruit-filled angels

peeling landscapes

down to atomic backdrops

with their maggot teeth.

The webs of the cracks

in hallowed ground

are home to me now.

Out of the mesh

of little gray men

came swashbuckling bones

with a blonde wig and a bucket

bending spiritual poles

letting sculpted paint leap

from the empty and hated places

letting seams of ragged concrete

speak boldly with flowers

and these gardens of feverish error

outgrow all man's fake stone

for his hours alone.

Missiles faint from far off countries

are a glowing mist

with orbs and angles

in the glass of their existence

setting like fettered letters

in the cold paths on torrid air

the ranks of the disturber's hair.

Out of the plague with plumes

I came calling for kisses,

filling silver carts

with silver onions

calling to the clouds

for golden bread,

making what could be made

with tormented blood.

In the mold with diamonds

jostling for articulate space

watching a fleet of beds

from rooms long torn away

sent into seams of water

with infinite ways.

Let the guitars clang

at their filthy apex

and the dungeon wounds wheel:

let them be ripe for service

at the bright mirage

with the birds that the breezes heal.

The seasons in their visionary cycles

fall across vacant lots

I am swimming in the shadows

on the edges

where the hedges and the chain link fence

mesh with green and thorny wires

to trace the outlines

of a bright volcanic island

in the curdles of a murky sky

I am searching for the drums

that echo on the cliff face

of my abandoned soul.

Stabbed in the vortex

of converging opposites,

the camouflage

bursts into radiant flowers.

The foreground is drained

through black holes

and ugly kaleidoscopes.

I sit on a dim hill

sipping my

electromagnetic seltzer

convinced of clouds

and their thoughts

the many souls within me

running to a trail of water

running to a caged flame.

The branches

and their attendant owls

yield to a greater light.

The red mouth coos

to a blue lagoon.

The lanterns dance

with robot rays

around the old fireplace.

The scarecrow leaning

in the tin barn

calculates and moves.

I take a rag from

someone's distant pocket

and wipe away borrowed drool.

The ground with its

symphony of pipes

is my box of tools.

The granite in my spine

gets used.

The chant rises sublimely

from a pack of fools.

The hips of this matrix

have the seed's power

in a glass that cools.

ASTRAL ANGER

Desolate reminders

of the beauty that could have been

ravaged by empty heads

of styrofoam rhetoric

filling their poisoned air

with more nothingness.

Sunflowers pouring revelation's light

into hell's infertile sanctuary

marked as a ruined sacrifice

by broken pillars

reflected in a huge demonic egg.

Hatching a last green thorn

in the fractured miasma

the spider's craft

making love to embers

of searing metal,

strung up in its web

of ephemeral steel

and supernatural roses.

In the vacant expanses

where blooming moss cracks tar

and all the voices

popped and faded long ago

I go looking for no one

with a mask of gold

just in case my own reflection

catches me looking for more.

Days hacked open

by the night's ghostly marauders

look strange to the living

but not to my spinal eye.

Desks are empty

with scarred chairs

on roofless floors

the charts of catacombs

they never touched

laid open like the plans of ants

dates dutifully kept

that never came

on calendars of glass

with oily numbers.

Time was scrubbed

and so was I

of many errors

but the wind still howls

like something lost

in this parched

and achingly clean 

redrawn December.

BLUES FOR AIDA part three

All time has stopped,

there is no goal in sight.

I am tired of striving:

I don't want to be seduced.

I have seen the pretty ones

come and go, I have sung

my songs for them, I have

built them little cabins of color.

All have gone to the tides

of eight or nine planets,

all have gone swimming

in the gravities of those

stark and foreign worlds.

I don't want to fall into

the dream of your dark hair,

I don't want to fall into

the dream of your compact

and delicious little body.

But a beautiful woman

is a gift from God:

I don't want to look away.

INTERLUDE

There's a crescent moon

shining in a clear sky

that keeps me coming

back to autumn.

All the invalids, all the

crippled scenery around them

still praising babies,

fresh new life

in the shell of imperfect light.

I can see your spirit

dancing in your eyes.

I want you to touch me softly,

where the deer go to lie,

on a blanket you brought

from your childhood, battered

by many journeys, into my

second reach of arms.

That set of cells is gone,

that reached for another.

That beaming sun is gone,

that smote us while we lay.

BLUES FOR AIDA part two

Aida, you are more beautiful

than all the beauties.

How can my heart

catch up to you?

I cry to you with my grief

that resounds

in the deep hillsides.

I paint myself into

a sublime wound that bleeds.

My mouth is crooked,

my words are broken.

Who can undo my suffering?

I want you to swing from me

like a swing from a tree.

Cling to me

so that I can be strong,

let me hold you

so that I can be a man.

BLUES FOR AIDA

Your beauty makes me

want to reach into the heavens.

On the blade, on the blade

of a hard life

I try to sleep.

Help me overcome my tongue,

make me clear as glass.

Ring the bells, ring the bells

in my bones.

Aida, you are the daughter

of darkness and light,

you are the queen

of the paths that shine.

Take me out of my broken state,

heal me so I can speak

with my hands

to you who are among the living.

Her fingers write in lightning

and alphabetic vertebrae

from before the cave of time

I watch the viscera

paint the pillars

peacefully transfixed

by the play of crimson waves

the shining of a bone sun

an ember of lunar pubis

glowing in the mechanista night.

Spirit from the sinews of the clouds

that hold the reins of sweet blood,

of edible mercury

and elastic kisses,

of skin that holds the twilight

in a deeper world.

REWARD

I see her dark braids

on the cracked horizon

sending light in little lines

to the steeple made

by demolished temples

crashing into one another

as torn things reach

coming into their foundation

the blades wet

and flexible as grass

cutting away

dead hasty shoots

her forms of many births

coalescing in the mold

of one small and bold

senorita.

EDGEKEEPER

I am the edgekeeper, inked

lion in the grass.

I perpetuate my own

mythology.

Predators pass through me

and I take their entrails.

The grey men, the ashen men

in corners, I know

where they live.

I am the line stretching

between silence and chaos.

The words for land rise

out of the strummed

channels of my throat.

The light grooves

and all is ensnared

in abounding love.

The cracked speedometer draws

a seamless spool.

The ground drools.

Suits of torn shadows

sown together by snakes of rain

we're dancing in a fever

on the bridges of light-beams

that stretch from frozen

moment to frozen moment

never reaching the end

floors blinking in sync

to some new Earth's counter-spin,

some pinball machine

upside-down in the ceiling

sending signals to the pulse of time.

We're a twined hook holding

what slips away and is bloodied,

holding what does not slip away

in the slump of hours

or the sulk of rhyme.

CRYPTIC VESSEL

The many paths, the colored tassels

dangling from jagged and branched

cliff sides that hug them close,

and a crucifix of frozen gelatin

rising out of it all.

Out of the collapsed many

the startled yet triumphant one.

Out of the seas

of shifting kitchen counters

the ticking of microwaves

and mouse-like movement

of living lights,

this divine brat of fierce echoes

more real than the last,

more real than the everlasting.

Dragged along erupting flora

by intelligent cranes,

by laser-guided anomalies,

secured in the sap of fate

by veins that are mouths

that are eating,

alive in a bubble of glass

with cinematic hatreds,

with loves of the past codified

with an ejecting mirage

and an electronic tiger

and a talking stove

that cares.

Solitary in the midst

of insistent fragments,

of pipes that cry

their own mechanical names,

waiting for the kiss that clears

away the artificial magic,

waiting helplessly among the many

things that mindlessly clamor,

brushed and stapled and waiting

in the nostrils of a beak

that bites at time

dawn rhyming with an elegant blade

that lays its open dome

with reactive ribbons

and the source insubstantial

of a killing salt

that never rests

among the startled stars

and the fabric disrespected

one wounding eye.

Frozen roads that glisten

around a raging sun

ribbons of torn space

abandoned constellations

reconfigured by heat of desire.

Bridges flowering

against an almighty void

archways reflecting agitated light

bend strangely to emergent blades

that cut the clouds of cliff-face

to a finger-size door.

Branches of blood

from my face of echoes

to a baked brick wall

where the vines like living snakes

shed skin to smoothly crawl

and resurrect the grandeur of the fall.

MONSTER MOVIE

Flaxen-headed smiles

from between the cutting waves

oceans of leaden numbers

from the windows of collapsing towers,

ticket windows on fire

with beautiful departures,

dove's wings on a ridge of frozen milk

clacking like the body of a bug.

My quill fingers pick up liquid smoke,

I can't speak to the only one I love,

my lungs are a map of her ways

who walks the balconies connecting

these boiled islands

her powers give the red hallways

a glaze of polished salt

flickering with tidal shadows,

the cloth that wraps her

is pressed against my mouth,

the glory and the ferment

of the trees and their reach

is entirely within her,

I am wept by lights of the electric streets

whipped naked at a dead bus station,

if I conquer these peaks of sand

I'm still a slave to her autumnal enigma,

the grave glitters, her speckled beams

deliver the roots to earth

to make me her couch of birches.

GROTESQUE

Lavender pastures she laid to waste

I laid in like a dissembled rack of bones

steaming with cartoon thought-clouds

of naked words afloat in my foolishness.

The sky has prongs of light

that move my ribs around

like a finger bowl.

The gaps in atmospheric mantle

are filled with the faces of women,

delighting in my refined cruelty

to a block of wood,

watching the rivulets

of competing suns

carve me up.

Crucified with phalluses of brass

my blood waters the violets.

Mushroom fences hold back

the snail headed cattle.

Lion's ripped mane

and lion's claws at task

I tear the carcass

of my last remaining prey

while the pretty hyenas laugh.

I watch the neon

merry go round

spin off into the night sky

without me.

I check the meters

on the labyrinth's

ticking walls.

Ferrets dancing on vibrant pipes

that penetrate aurora borealis

lead me to the rings

of a frozen world.

I am covered in embers

strange letters of loathing

transformed to a cage of hands.

The streets blend and blur

on the chugging of artificial earth.

I watch the wheel come back

as a cloud of sand.

When the door closes finally

on this shaded cage of glass

I will be a willing wanderer

on the chains that are all human paths

leading to celestial incineration

with a side of french fries.

Roads will throw off

their furniture of wheels

lava will gulp the clock

and the plans

for more business meetings

the ships will move off brightly

into the math that kills.

Playgrounds for adult machines

eclipsed by gassed lands

shorelines eating the scissor's handle

in a burning hand.

VACANCY

Storm of the eye

that shuts on blood

sky's epiphany that scours

the carcass-stricken ground for meaning

bricks on fire with desirous paint

wings flapping that were never here.

The crushed canisters of blinding drinks

clouds ripped by a punch-red sun

the girders of x-rayed skyscrapers

glinting through my rotten soul

the slow rape of the morning

that rolls my wheels.

Flies with bulbs of multifaceted diamonds

fish with monied scales

and spurs of syringes breathing

the luxuries of time

that build a reef.

Sand grains in the drowning salt

the light-cracked acres of deep black water

breathless revelation of

death's hive to come.

Throats gushing against floors

that are some double's ceiling

lilacs pouring from the doors

of flooded domes.

I'm a crate of discs

in a dust-ridden ring of restaurants

that holds no bleeding thing

in a paw that sings.

Bones played into the taffy of dreams

by a bad highway

torn tar that rides the sacred

blood removed from life

organs hung

in a hammock of frozen flowers

the far-off stare of emerging nonexistence

sending up its smoking tongue.

No words for the many freckles,

no words for the red red hair.

I beat the white walls

with numb fists

but no flowers come.

Walls of stone departing

from far flung fields

crux where she gave the well

a stem of gold

to the chimes that taught the wind

another language

rivets born in tears

that hold a wooden castle's

ochre painted walls.

If math is the mind of God

I'm a crooked wanderer

a crest of exploded skin

blinking on painted sand.

Trade winds pick me up

on a chain of light bulbs

roads of a fallen map

take off like determined seed.

Mantle of ancient depth that she

set flowing like the milk of cactus

dying husk of an immortal reed.

In the wild fray of her hair

I hear electric crickets from another world

wings taking me over torrid landscapes

drawers thumping on the bureaus that were lost
rooms glued together by a desperate architecture

doors made in haste and windows wanting

beams that harbor woolen hearts

chairs of ice on a melting shore.

Hours were rewound with hooks of steel

to spatter the glass planets

her winding roads are what my circuits feel.

ENTROPY

Dragged along the reef

of twisted frozen souls

like a dented discarded beer can

child of the rip tide

haunting fallen architecture

and statues wearing painted slime

in the invaded depths

grasping with hungry bones

and torn twins of muscle

ghostly flesh speared on goldenrod

like cobweb sagging on a field of spikes

dewdrops gathering on milk bottles

in some ancient dawn.

Lay me down on that leaning porch

as it slides down the cliffside

let my tatters be a looming flag

or some sail on fire.

Let me be a skeleton's nucleic print

or erupting light

black butterfly of entropy

let me rise on breaking branches

and eat the red crest's

raw persona of the tidal heights.

Pinned to a jeweled leaf

in the rocks among the pines

curving and laughing

toward the warped sky

into some larger being,

some problematic blade of grass

some mushroom cloud

in fishbowl glass

reeking of intemporal existence,

shedding bark into a bucket

of copper-lashed wood

and the sperm's breath

of exposed cellars

blossoming with ferns

and spider's eggs

of hot translucent light

souls cut by the clock's hands

descending into pinnacles

of dark height

beds wedged into convex ceilings

of milk bones and rolling

parallelograms of color,

all sliding on her fingers

filled with bright ancestral tools

for an astral use.

Lavished by the lick of wicked fates

in a concrete block

surrounded by flowers

one way glass glinting

on a pillar of salt

in the ragged beard and scarred flint

of a tarnished wizard

my brain explodes with bulbous girls

grinning and tastily gnashing

their little mouths of light

on my torn mountain side

clicking with heated vents

and rock slits of immense power,

the trickling broken moon

that makes the peak of wolves

collapse in a ring of doves

and wet gray ashes,

fronds yearning

with the voice of liquid shade.

I gather these little tendrils

into a structured storm

with many wide knots

many centers of gravity

pulsing with devilish eyes

and place a throne of red velvet

for you to sit in the strummed valleys

of my monumental web

these vacant headlights

are implanted in the caverns of my chest

beaming to nowhere

and I can't get down from the heights

of a mountain lion's diet

to sit at the tea table

sharing fables with basic bitches

small volleys for the foam of the new

gestating in the end of time

like a mouth of ultraviolet

like a seeded wound

like a tongue lashing to somewhere

chartless and abandoned

this tender vein

in a maze of movable steel

vast as a twilight moon

for accelerated earth

oceans rasping in her girdle

for a thousand robot butlers

setting chairs on the ceiling

one final word.

Track me to the cave of my ancestors

pin me down on a bale of hay

set me on fire with oil

still I come up like water

from the earth

crying like an alphabet.

Curves of pine coated roads

eating machines and metal grass

an angel of death in soft smoke

wick of the candle's end

high on ephemeral hilltops.

I melt sand to catch

your glass in deeper glass

I sculpt the mountainside into

a spaceship's window

this moving portal's

gunshot of light

plays with my bones

I follow its birth

to a stone seed

to the bronze spray dancing on wood

in the flower of surrounded hours

where her flash of eyelash is a waterfall

and the sky has gravity's balls.

I've been flirting with life

my whole life

but life doesn't want me.

She throws me off from places

where lice can cling

and I'm not anything.

Cloves running with shiny smoke

give off more existence than I.

The pie has cut me,

I can't get anywhere.

These streets and signs

are cages for kept birds

who keep me out.

I can scream where they

can't even speak

they can live

where I can't even be.

Time's folded

and it can't

unstick and flow

I ride a spiderwebbed spyglass

across a bridge of dinosaur bones

to see you are the eye of the storm

that enwraps my life

belts running mineral scythes

around abandoned planets

could not cage you

in their ancient ways

I wait in a suit of extinguished wings

I wait for your love in a chair

that has just stopped smoking

you stand on a waterfall's lip

while the lexicon of light

pours out from under you

and I am laughing in the leaves

on the water's glaze

that ride to the whirlpool's fade.

Stalk's blood path of beheaded flowers

shimmering atop green rods of light

casting hooks into the sunset

that hauls them up for one last gasp

as the shells on the bottom of the ocean

drink from life

and the rusty crests of hills

rustle in the gulp

of enveloping power

I shrink wrap time's frozen morsel

and put it deep in a fire breathing trunk

whose hinges are matching the fingernails

of one who watches me depart

like saltless meat

into the belly of a vast slug

fissures darting on a spaceship's hull

that writes my name in liquid metal

to be sealed by her vision's flood

while the dams break bread for mud

the pines and ice of my surrender

roads painted for a globe's December

seed's pulsing root of crude.

The moon's wisps of cloud-caught light

rake the cracked auditorium

grasses with gummy eyes

spying through wrecked window frames

to the painted sperm and egg

of rain-swept prairies.

To a palace of glued leaves

to a blue and tide-high October

earth clenching its mad seams

oozes purple wrath

from lips beneath miles of red clay

the baked roofs of cobweb synagogues

forked lightning's promise of grapes

not aged or dried

by the singing scythe.

You've got that red fire

that I want on my tongue

you sculpt ponds

into orbs of dark light

and globes for the heads

of soothing scepters

you animate

the dining rooms

of the dead

with electric scars

and lay down

laminated aisles

for storms to flow in rows

and forms to find their vegetable matter

I dream of a dock

where dreams are finally fellated

in moonlight dream

like a lover of unmapped planets

dream with the yeast in my head

for the bread of my brain

hot bitch swollen

with the milk of my seed

drowning in daylight

drowning in the lightning script

of a metallic morning

drowning in the dreams of the damned

who sacrifice for a phantom

branches of space travel

are a tunnel of Christmas wreaths

and the trees on their wings are flying

when your desire brings my bones

to their desired end

staring upward into the infernal nexus

your beauty on stakes of rain

in the graveyard of my wars

a cabin for flowing water.

The butterfly's shadow

on a battered shade

scarves whipping in the air

around her in her flowering tresses

and flowered dresses

cracking the concrete walls

where she walks in twilight's fertile abandon

huntress of crushing songs

on golden paths that shine within

a magnolia orchard

the gnarled arms slowly spouting cones

that drop to her foot marked ground

and surrounding hallways of highway

for days of pain erased by her lips

prayers for her knees and hips

that I cast on a wailing wave.

She shakes

the veins between worlds

and the squirrels' tails

flying along the sides

of heaving rivers

she makes rabbits jump

electric shade

and the raided palace

erupt with healing paint

she makes the fences

bow and scrape.

Throngs in newsprint underwear

follow her down the pier

and into the dark water.

She has touched the sky

with colors like cracking ice,

made benches on bronze wings

fly up above

the trapped neighborhoods.

I sit on one that wobbles

through tortured knots of cloud

that push the quiet part

of heavy music

and melt the electric sword.

An ocean of leaves

opens up as I fall

past her mirth

and return to Earth.

Drag step elevated alleyways

a glitch in machine eyes

that leaves empurpled vertebrae licking life

boomerang journeys from a broken keychain

mouths grasping from beneath a conveyor belt

numb stacks of rubbery dolls

long bending poles of ancient light

wolf cubs tumbling a sun sacked valley

ghosts hand in hand on ice

blades hung from enveloping branches

lava crapped like candy

from a bank of alien clouds

five dragon tongues in one

our reaching DNA

pawing at the walls of this velvet matrix

that wraps the curtains in walls

and the walls in fire that has thoughts

green moon on the mushrooms and moss

fate gone to the river's branches

trees nude to the air that rends.

Wrapped in the result

of these barren days

I become an astral flower,

tides of orange paint

cover the staircase,

shadows of searching fingers

the spokes of enraptured wheels

formed from living water,

tubs of rotten wheat

that give birth to

a wounded slew of eyes,

the entropic mercy of rusted metal

planted in the camera's guts

a butterfly's blinking knives

the desert soaked in galactic color

a row of tribes

climbed cliffs of milk

to nuzzle roots

of the tongue tip mother,

laid out the breathing stones

with names and dried stripes

of bloody fur, the frames

of a desolate professor

unlearned by yearning rifts

between male and female.

There is a branch of heaven

reserved for certain redheads

a feather of melodic lunacy

that hovers eternally.

There are high crossbeams

that drip with blue and white birds.

Webs of light that broke

under the weight of gorgeous coal.

An octopus beak

lost in a chorus of wires

saddled with freaks

and thrashing for ancient fire.

Harmonies cracked

within their shells,

the split hairs

of whispering wires.

Skyscrapers bending like reeds

in the tumults and catacombs

of her hair,

spilling from starry clouds

and maps of blue thread
weaving mountains of dark matter

rose tinted sanctuaries of glass

her curvature of turned gardens

flightless wings in round pools.

Roads overflowing other roads,

a bamboo grid on fire

spurting names in milk,

the outlines of missing towns

sprouting ferns from a gap

in space time continuums,

the ground a wavy series of mouths

toward blue lit corn,

the brass lit sky

scratched by long crooked arms,

a glass cube where I eat my lunch

floating in oceans of hot wax

that is cooling fast.

As the sighing becomes

the traffic of worlds

as the bluejay's brain remains

slightly mysterious

as the pyramids of jelly

turn to horizon salt

you will be melting

a hot murmur

without a cage of ink

in the backroom's

camera circle

where the styrofoam cones wail

in the pulse from a portable speaker

so emptily reflecting glass walls

for fake wood limbs that crawl

a vibrating hallway

ten circuits deep

in a one circuit mind

your beauty for the sighted

and the blind

is seeping all through

nooks and crannies of a mountainside

where sleepers roll and divide

rings of earth to your phosphorous torso

your knees of crackling sacrifice

your browns and reds flayed by gray

between the shelves of a future life

kissing air like a knife

fluorescent tubes in obedient rows

tight spaceship boats

on the river of a ceiling

fronds that knelt between bags of flour

silver tongs and the bronze of the hour

as the breathing of torrid hulls

eclipses your monarch spring

and my wolfpack winter

you are the dissenting dawn.

Fires on a ragged shoreline

you and me in rain's creation

down to the very last vessels of our souls

slabs and cells of fallen light

catching oilbrush diamonds

fruits of death's ecstasy

shuddering the ponds misplaced

by the fisher crane's error,

bodies of water floating

exposed away from land

broadcasting webs of scum

fried monkeybars made

from cylindrical screens

bones weaned away from the night

where the groans grow

bright in yearning

and the churning cores

of eaten planets

cast vines through

an abstracted door.

We talked about kingdoms gone

to riot and blown

we talked about the beauty

of departed women

talked at the back bench

of an unplayed game

having given our all

to a satanic void

having given all our summers

to an unseen winter

Lord, have mercy on

the sick we have lost so many

but the blade prays too

and reflects the light

of the creator like

a can of raid.

A VISIT WITH WALT

I do not suffer

the hopeful vision

of Walt Whitman

but I carry his corpse

like a rose.

In the shadow of his beard

the homegrown grains

grow antlers and go crazy

in American ways.

Walt's children

are scattered,

his optimism

has left us baffled

and strange.

His rebirth

happens backwards

in my veins.

Open the astrological loins

of mapped and penetrated skies

let the molecules of ecstatic ruin

pour out like invisible coffee

into the claw marks of icy lanes

let the treble of uprooted forests

live in celestial fire.

Revisit the plastic cabins

with ribbons of rhythmic water

let the pawn become king

in his season of rust

and the crust of time rip like canvas

the black hole a bridal shower

sword's flow of telescope

strumming tender clouds

stems cut for flaming garlands

a kaleidoscope sun.

Our love-play would make

the gods jealous.

Your beauty is destroying me.

I worship the rainbow

from a dark organ.

I bury the ink and let it

fly off into the air.

Desks and chairs made

from female fur surround me.

Fires of poisoned glass

that paint a sea of flesh

with unyielding light.

I bolt my cot of bold

deep-seeded dreams

close to the ledge

and watch the fireflies

save us all.  The galactic

dream is ever reaching.

I can't fall.

Blood lamps

from the glory of the creator,

morsels of light that shine

from the depths and disintegrate

on the heights.

Teeth of a grain of sand

that holds no welcoming flavor.

But then she parts the parted waves

into multifaceted fragments

loosing lilac from glass

and velvet from denim

filling the shrines with spirit again

and the cups with fat

and the vats with slimmer

and longer and deeper vats

to the core of the Earth with a song

hot black thanksgiving.

She is the ball

bearings of the earth,

her pivot in the stars

is dispersing the blood of life

like light on clay pots,

she melts the fences

of my careful networks

and lets them speak in rivulets

of brass glow on the straw's

angles of an unknown mercy

all the sidewalks and hot roadsides

gathered into one feminine arm

pulsing with the jets of her smile,

her gaze to enlarge the saplings

cut down on some ragged doorstep

her card-carrying eclipse

piling up in fine

black roses and freckled hips.

DYSTOPIAN ELECTRON

Black vans stop and spill out

blood spattered furniture

from evaporated bodies

leaves fall flickering on

heaps of discarded beds

branches reach over fences

with alcoholic hope

winds drunk on a breeze's fancy,

eloped fragments of boiled light

shat with diamonds

down a raceway tonight.

Bright galleries, chrome

possessions, multilithic cities.

Man treasures

his attempts at permanence

but God sees value

in what has been broken.

In the vision of many rivers

in the redefinition of solitude

in the mineral waves of overlap

in the egg of sanctuary

born against oppression

in the capes of a comically noble satan

ripping like old theater curtains

I follow the heaps of her roiling hair

as it rips the beam of this freak reality circuit

I find a conduit between dreams

and fall into its dusty box of screws

I am sowing the bones of old lives

together with grudging harmony

I am watching the cliffs

and their stilled

blood gush of hills

work it out.

Far deep from the light of bodies

dungeon deep in my beat routine

I see the shadows of squirrels

pale passing across my long

rectangular windows

and the lank late days of summer

that lay there on the rug dying

echoes a sweet Spanish guitar

her hair nonpareil

the stone chancer

of bridges that slope and dive

is gambling his razor's edge

in a stone mirror

the bright shades part

financier part necromancer

wax twigs in a butterfly mask

some Joseph Cornell scenario

put a torch to my soul

from the cracked heavens

she was walking on docks

of gliding glory

in the chemical we call night

she was the panther in oil

moon that kept us up all night long

with a lady's promises

and a whore's kisses

black metal as the bandwidth

cutting saturnine time

bringing a mountain down

to a scrim of canvas

being the mountain brought down.

Scars left on the temporal scape

from galaxies that flew away

and left their outlines bleeding

on an empty land.

Themes die in the air

at least the stripped things gleam

some ragged consolation

crawls out of the pit

with crooked teeth

but the weight

of so many collapsing stories

has built a skeleton

of glue and gold

that is drowning

my skin suit

in a plastic tomb.

Sleeping in the rafters

of smashed heavenly light,

feathered rings clinging

to a copper lattice,

sponges of exploded sugar

tumbling across a pentagram's

nest of gnarled angles

the unheard scripture's metal cover

birth's mouth of centipedes

clenched in foam

like so many steaming commas

two vagrant flames

not yet bereft of anatomy

dancing on the finished blueprint

crooked noose to hook

aligned in the vine's alchemy

shrine's glassy pink ejecting grapes

safe from the fountain of their skeletons

lipstick traces that cracked a stage

interpenetrant fiber optic

flushed radiant angles

the torn clay of wheeling rages

bulbs caged on the water's face.

I am yearning for a web

of silk sprayed bronze,

to be a parrot's brightest feather

aloft in your paranoid tapestry

of liquid error

consumed by wizards of grass,

concrete carved supple as a tongue,

chutes of jeweled

and palatial nerve centers

in their chemical gloss,

glass bright in dilapidated hallways

with a frog's glue of fingertips

disciplining disobedient beauties

with a tender time frayed hand

beset by spiralled rains

and winds with interlocked bands

the curves of a dark born land.

You are foreshadowed

by dark purple clouds

with lace outlines

you appear in my room

like an incantation

forming many radiant figurines

star maps throughout

a curving mirror

coming back to me like

waves on an entranced circuit

your shape is the one

my hands make in the deepest void,

the corners of a heavenly place

bring me up on hooks,

your eyes dance

like the mercy of a predator,

the ground shakes with seismic heat,

the hills crumble,

a citadel forms on the crest

of a breaking cliff,

the branches of blood strive

through many entangled colors,

you are my feminine leopard,

fissures of leaden red that tumble

through the wood well's walls.

Long lanes on fire with roses,

skies cut into vibrating tendrils,

earthquake playing a harp of ribs

that stings a stillness in the blood,

one lump of deranged humanity

singing like an angel.

Benches plush with rotten rags

for the sleepers and dreamers.

Bright water pouring through

the broken moon.

Two thorny gloves

to grip a sighing highway

ten tongues escaping fresh

from a cloudy vein.

SABBATH BLOODY SABBATH RAG

Dear God of bisecting angles

set me up on a grim plateau

with these half-dead so-called men

and let me rip them all to shreds.

I am tired of this artificial peace

the glint of its tense web

waiting to be picked up

like a ring of swords.

Give me magic bitches now

or I will shit on the walls

of the temple.  Run the faucets

out and dry up the water

so that I can drink death

from an ancient bottle

and bury the wound in glass.

Wrap the raging vines

up in a cute bowtie

let them go to work on my throat.

Anoint the snow with sun

ride ultraviolet scopes

down shrinkwrap clothes

and orange vapor

pines lining up

in bloody moonlight

my tongue is an ax

my arms the frenzy of injured pincers

my soul a centipede's drainpool

and the perch of a praying mantis

one giant crimson ear

listening to weightlifter theologians

pro wrestling political scientists

and their weightless follower drones

ready to bash them all

with a pyramid of painted bricks

painstakingly dissassembled

this stack of fever dreams

these human cigarettes

fully smoked.

I burn my hands

on the wheel of creation

waiting for the lifeblood

of some slain

and unwilling celestial

to send its rivulets

down my shaken walls.

Watching some comet soul

hit the omnipotent bulkhead

looking for a grain beyond grain

a match that strikes itself

some eternal kernel

evincing itself in form.

And the roads

go up in smoke

and the beautiful peak of ice

dried by a far flung thought

and sprayed with metallic

attempts at permanence

must steepen and twitch

with living fibers

and long blonde hairs from hell.

Glass bulbs outward

from many portals

like the throats of freaking frogs

building a tongue web in twilight

for some searching moon

searching because she is empty

searching for fun because her name

is already carved into my chest

by the details of oblivion.

Pillars of marble wheat

grapes plucked from frozen generation

the bones that built a feather in granite

all gone to an unseeing machine.

Better to be scarred by beauty

and stranded in this world

bleeding streams of unanswered letters

than absent, abstract and subtracted

from passion

protected by shells of ice

static in a rift

between worlds.

Here, a fleck of light

on a blade,

the ground jumps

and collides like a lover

with bones, with heat

and the heat it seeks

in the hornet's nest

of her darkening hair.

I set the pyramids on fire

with a thought.

And watched the great pharaohs

go under me in a stream of glass

but now they are coming back.

Now I see pentagram stars

dripping black jelly.

And the dancing of swamp skeletons

lives in my rearview mirror.

Catch me in your net and kiss me

before I go out to the battle

of lost mobs who burn

through to hell in a tide of gas.

Crank the seats back

to a thick vibration

let the scepters of streetlight bulbs

quicken the slow blood.

Let it come

with a lightning lick of laughter

let it land with ten kittens

and a cardboard bag

let the apples roll

to magnetic blades

in the tips of roots

gold mask grow feathers in twilight

let the pious fold.

THE GODDESS OF RAIN

I'm talking to the rain goddess,

telling her everything

that burps and whistles

is not really going to death

but to a deeper life

and we're floating

she tells me to enjoy

these dreams in their sweet decay

to embrace what fades

for its own existence

she strokes me

with the tenderness of smoke

rolling her thick hips

across my shallow grave

where vines pull me out

and shoots of bamboo

rescue my vertebrae

for her whips to cross over

we're dancing on cubes

of fluorescent air

I ask who's leading and she laughs

I take off my breastplate of script

and she laughs

I take off my radiant colors

I remove my cabinet arms

and cupboard legs

and she laughs like ivy

tendrils spreading and snaking in rhythm

she is oiling all the engines

in all my grey garages

til I come spilling out like silk

to worship her with shields

and whole civilizations

I take off my lasso

of computerized paperwork

and she laughs like a storm

I take off my leash of dreams

and she gives me a new sleep

I take off my sinews of money

she boils the ringleader

I eat of the ringleader

and when finally she lies down with me

something of her has gone

to the waves and the violent flowers

where we are no longer crashing

so I hoist her to shoreline

fresh in my arms to awaken

and I weep

like the lines on a fucking rock.

Our kisses were blasted by rain

but they did not disappear,

each blinking smack of lips

drifted into the liquid embers

of a searching chaos,

each touch in time

bisected by the sweet web

of our presence here

as the falls pour

and the green walls purr

for reunited claws.

I stare at your golden head

and let the wells run out.

I watch the streamers

of green light reach

fluttering over the mouths

of all doors.

I see you in a column of steam

from a confusion of wounded windows,

eyes chiming with the secret

charm of my soul, freckled throne

where my tongue surrenders,

deep valentine core

with a torso of hooks and thistles

the spirit's missile

in a ring of doves

cutting clouds like rubber

I lay on the beach with my ribs open

with my nimbus of brass bells

with my limpid shackles

shadows glued to the retreating moon

two keys in a vine tangled

blood soothed by a sparkling scar

dew glinting on resurgent ruin.

Fight for the fused inevitable ember

spiked mouth laughing

at the heart of creation

can't crack the hands

drumming on the drum heart

watch the rails break off

into a ragged sun

see me waiting in my skeleton

eyes popped at the end of a dock

teeth clenched on an electric line

throw me a joker card sunrise

I'll pass it off as my own dawn

if you keep it in the fortress

of a maple fallen.

I'm already

in the gleaming hereafter.

No stars touch me now.

The sheen disperses

from a town surface.

The rains fall

but there is no sound.

Here in the quiet spirit

I see my body chasing beauties

who are going

into the great fire alone.

Here in a chalk square

within a wired circle

the glare of galaxies

on a split sunflower

and a lucky hammer

is bringing me down.

Let the sun boil its way through

this ocean of reptilian spit nests,

let the rusty girders

like long neglected pencils

shift into the swallowing depths.

Let mint flavored air

flow over the strange blades

that have stopped moving,

let the chains of flesh

sag into the waiting coals

of the spirit's core

and be renewed in geometric fire.

Let the diamond

blink its rows of eyes

let the granite rivers

move.

Dawn split me

I stared at my prettier fragment

while the lightning

followed her to Earth

and I fell upward

to lunar grey

to inhabit where she hid

and come out only

to attach her coils

to my hot nest

to my symphony

of shining chairs

and floating bows

the sound of gliding boats

and clunking oars

a canal outside

a brick ledge window

brings me back to harmonize

with her dare.

We slide down the shine

of a glass dome,

fondling each other's

serpentine necklaces,

watching hell's maps made flesh

take a labyrinthine gulp.

Lights gel bedded

in fractured roads, torn islands

spilling crumbled minerals

and the play of ancient roots

all frazzled abandon sewn through

with a lurking permanence,

forms hung like clothes

on strangely insistent hangers,

wigged spirits

half gone and arrived in song.

If the sky has a trap door

to the leaping background

that stars like bullet holes

indicate while wavering

in celestial steam,

in your naked outline

let me pig out on the richness

of so much dangling shade,

so many vines that reach

planets in purple turmoil

if the serpents all

have the same disruptive

singing mouth

let me fall to the arms

of a secret south

and nestle in its hinge

while the solar wheels

gulped by black holes

let us out into the depth

beyond the fringe.

You are folding the flowers

into glowing stamps,

taking all the humming circuits

into a hidden center,

tugging my strands of life and death

with you into radiant abyss,

cleft by a pierced shadow,

linking my bones on fire.

You paint the rags

that hang from metal trees

in a twilight courtyard.

I stand with my mouth open

stuck to all the flaking ages

flying past

hoping the hot sight

lasts.

Empires of cobweb

lit up by a chain of bulbs

that sear their alien verbs

into my singing vertebrae

and part the lips

of savage hills

with falling water.

The longing for wolves

the rawness of their sight on snow

souls wincing next to televised houses.

The nexus of raving beauties

who send my crooked avatar

leaping a cliff's star map

of protruding teeth

healed by a backward ax

in some soft orbit.

Shadows that handed you

leaves bleeding bittersweet words

without my face or name.

THE FLOWERS OF METAL

The flowers of metal

dungeon heat for asphyxiated cold

demon dark lit up by love

in a stroke of ferocious mercy,

blades melted to the mountain's root

for the granite mouth's

blacksmith profanity

pagan heel denying

the ascension of master's babyface

springing from vein to vein

flying kicks in a quantum realm

madonna deflowered

for mischievous crucifix

bronze halls of required error

calmly holding the plumes of fire.

You are the scorched sky

of love's planet,

two hands

on a wheel of snakes,

lights flying

through the glass tone

of oiled bodies,

curbstones ripped

by a hailstorm

of giant diamonds,

dog's faces looking

longingly at troughs of meat

they will never touch.

You are the clutch

of fragrant matter

flowers in a basket

twitching with fresh cut life

like my frayed

and radiant veins.

Stems firing ragged letters,

long leaves tickling streams

of cloud-veiled air,

lips carved from granite

screaming silence against

the leaden moons

hung on singing wire

a temple of bamboo

festooned with drums

that tingle in frenetic thunder,

two sets of arms

hugging the same radiant oval

of subtracted space,

ring's rim of a meteor's range

the deranged surf

scattering rejected knives

where one handprint rides.

Set alight

in an ocean of fragments

held tight between

rope of clouds

kitten cool as ice

watching the shapely fire.

Stunned eyes in an arc

cutting through the horizon.

Flags are painted rags

in the shivering twilight.

Hands that reach through miles of glass

to meet in a storm of orchids

where we are aching water

and the flat sun sails.

Tangerine peels in the cannon's mouth

stems crawling into razor leaves

roots flailing through a vacant earth

as the sky produces soil

playgrounds heaving old bones into sunlight

chainlink fences running veins

to an oil soaked pyre

paint cursive tongues of mercury

fumes pouting from a melted mouth

eyes asleep in the grass hereafter

fruits of an ancient hand

the water of the land has a copper grip

that stops up alien batteries

and wets the pillars of winter

with summer lips.

She vibrates the twilight

talks to frozen whirlpools

from a violet shrouded hour

glass flaunts her offhand dancing

in the aisles of a curdled dusk

with granite guardrails

where we walk

toward each other through the telephone

flown man makes his cross on Venus

leather pants laughing on powerlines

dreaming of a rapt guitar

low stations

get their intricate motors raging

neon oils paint the water

harbor's ranks of salted blades.

Descending into caverns of volcanic light

two tiers for the weapons of the spirit

coalescing in a boundless world

for garlands of her hair

to walk on lightning

eyes dripping with the colors of the core.

Ropes of living fiber

binding bodies to bodies

tense across canyons

sun's bloom on their yawning twine.

Veins for the moon

trilling twilight creatures

clocks ticking with the drums

that made them wheels of sight.

Gravestones pockmarked

by laser dancing

guardrails painted

with silver light.

Slapstick loves

the great beyond that shreds bodies

and leaves bright souls

fluttering in battered air.

Hermits dancing

who never met in life

launched from their woodland cabins

to an astral horizon

copulating with the final curve.

Clouds were tables in another life

where I sat surrounded

flowers and laughing clowns

fast forward to twilight

the yield of rain filled shoes

to jagged feet

sun shattered into drooping daffodils

tongues frozen to rubber trees

in the lamp cracked forest.

Paved paths are lichen painted now

the moon lives on in stone

it turns out that a cosmic tic

kept the illicit glow

surviving blood and steel borders

flying through the spouts of lively canals

the resolution of plunging fowl

decked out in denied lightning.

When I bring my dawn to you

with a thousand rushing tunnels

through a mountain of tainted fog

and the yards fill up with green water

and the morsels of time

all gather wings and beaks

into the grand natural robot continuum,

we will be the yearning circuitry

that fills the tanks of paint

with a chain of tongues.

Days in the basement heart

where I wait beneath

a sledgehammer of rain

for the lost awakening

and the shape

of your name in my hands

that has gone missing

a thousand teacups floating

on a mighty river

give off a plaintive light

and turn in the current

I watch from a disconnected terrace

the lingerie of night trees and their leaves

waving farewell to a curveless world

man's dead straight lines ending in sand

before the palace of the sky

engulfs the written rye.

Rip my lungs out of the valley

ornament my bones

on the gleam of a fortress wall

let the monolith of lives

rise from between my spent ribs

and radiated eyes

make castles of coiled rope

go up upon my organ piles pale

sky opened like a fridge door

sun's jawbone of a shark outline

corpse water halfway up

my fading form

I'll walk

the glass cracked labyrinth walls

from the top down with peacock staircases

and watch the lilacs

run.

I will fracture

these dots of pain

with my high silver chisel

until the blade runs with jewels

and the sky's thumb

and forefinger

bring you close to me,

I will mow the edges

with teeth of dawn

and watch twigs shower down

from your reclining cloud,

I will collect

the badges of moonshine

from a cool blue shore

and place them in a tray

that seals the light

while you watch

from my arms in stone.

Roads of dirty ice

crawling through the palace walls

snakeskin dances from the underworld

unfurled in rain and radioactive twilight

broken lines that never merge in love,

fatigued kisses of distracted entities,

entropy in long rooms, delirious smoke,

ping pong in the silent mirror,

no escape says what the well belches

along with the bones

and the shadows of bodies

to reanimate their seductive suffering

and trances of detached prayer,

one lightning stroke

to the vast typewritten lair

and all becomes rings of vibrating hair

where the bell falls to atom Earth.

The bloom of plush violet

from this precious misery

rooted in the kitchens

and couches of the damned

soaring up from

rust scarred ditches

in the tortured clay

of afternoon,

clapping icy hands

that turn to hailstones,

broken diamonds

dancing on green grass

that cannot last.

Cut apart by angels

who shit in the grass

tough skies laughing at error

like a hat full of hell

that is glued to a swift

footless dream figure

and the docks are rolling out

like streams of swine

to feed the rolling brine

and I'm at home in days

of far rooted abandon

that separate the trees by reaching

shores that finger towards

some crawling infinity of clouds

that never breaks or yields

to the goals of man

far reaching vast in silence

suns capped by artificial snow

the long and ragged landscape

of glances that are gone

fond looks full of uncertainty

set loose to hell at last.

Skirts of long spent ages swishing by

reeds bent at the cavemouth

in a wounding light

my leopard robe and bright graffiti cup

left behind at the last milk crate alley

where I drank my fill of brine

and even the standstill bricks

were wavy with the future

long past the river that circled

a pine blueberry island

long past the porches

of ancient conversation

to one willing point of night.

The glory and wisdom of God is in

the cyclical movements of birds

under the concrete velvet cage

of web-strewn bridges,

zones of life in flight

above captive worlds,

threads that command iron empires,

pockets of love in spades

of infolded ways,

the flicker of bronzed images

sculpted on swelling tar.

She keeps the bees.

She remembers

rays of sun like swords

in a drawer.

She is an umbrella,

dangling little umbrellas

from her shells of light

that hold so many electric drums.

She watches the ladies who swear

and wear stiff stilettos

she has a flame like theirs

but keeps it quiet

as a wide awake mouse

or some searching rabbit.

She is the habits of the stars,

transplanted onto Earth

like a reverse moon current

of angelic hair

she makes the whirlpools turn

she brings the thickets to the air

she makes the clock's hands burn

and the blackberries feed the thorn

she makes the raspberries stare.

Pasted echoes

of the time that came before

glowing with their own decay,

soft minerals with infinite eyes.

Signs thrust into the sky

from crossing roads

scissor blades of broken plates

bright lights of the here ever after

high crates where vandalous artists

run around the catwork

skating pale and pink

with digital rage

dirt scooped

by the shovelhead piranha

swimmer's lanes

lengthened into downhill

one tilting curve.

Have I filled this unwilling vessel

with light long enough?

Even the bleakest angel

with deeply downturned eyes

shakes her head and says a bemused

No.

For some reason I am expected to go on

with a smoke sail

flashing through a handkerchief flag

with a stacked garden

slamming into my tidal kneecaps

as the forked lightning

combs the fractal yard

and the rain disembarks

from the sulfur of a painted space ship,

I am expected in canyons

where trees hang flanks of gallery space

and marble squares

out-maneuver my floating skull

zones where the girls in my beard

sound a dissecting chorus,

flats of rectilinear light

rented out by an android mania

adrift in ceaseless transit

puffed by flashing grass

into succulent stratosphere,

a wailing leg with seven mouths

like soil that called me south.

I think of you as an inverted comma,

life pouring forward from you

to its peaks of rugged flare

in the cracked panorama

in the summit of agonized cicada

in the flash magnolia

purposed for the craft of heat in savor

splashed on the map of desire

by the echoes that you stir the blood

by the dance beats in springtime

and the ringed bouquet of beaks

that you bring singing home.

Lillian

Your smile is evil like love,

like the split in the universe,

like all the atoms falling through

to become one being,

like the arc my body makes

when I am shot into the sky

and then quickly plummet,

like other bullets

sleeping in the curvature of Earth

to be born in a ruby fountain

tendrils of a shell

the stars sink toward

only lord of your choice of sword.

Islands floating with electric rope

milk crates and tea bag tags

the kisses in traffic

pay your dues

to the thumbscrew stars

and oscillating proto-bibles

theater of galactic bones

cathedral ceiling in a coffee cup's

foam bottom

thin journeys from a charcoal rag

where heaven lights a stairwell

fire escape arms

eyes and breasts in alarm siren

paths raging to a tar like iron

room where the world runs out

mills tilting in the talking hay.

Vain all the streetlight's lines and liquor

vain all the bitches that linger

and the vaults of December

vain all the wailing causes

that gather around the blood tree

and the scythe tongue splatters

beg for the divine ooze

watch the roots rip around

the brave turf near the gravestones

vain watchers who never rise or fall

wrapped up in a tidal scroll.

Skies go from blue to blonde to red

the signature becomes an ingrained gesture

yarn molds the precious cargo

to a fine limb

or a doorway in the blown horizon

poles wear wigs of gone swamps

drained remainders in the sun

walls deflect the yearning vine

and blanch it to a dead script

hilltops are pouring the shine

of live leaves and lips

through the shade of another world

wires carry lovers to each other's floors

the shelves carved into a cave

carry the fuel that flew.

The flower of life is forgetful,

her pain drives deeper and deeper

as action thrives, and

the sky is unappeased,

foundations quake

from the wet root

of maniacal buds,

the joker of hearts

cut to ribbons

in a jagged haze.

The bridge bent skyward

in a bleeding bow

lets forth its radiant streamers,

vines clap solid bells

on gaudy walls

that play with gravity,

pull and strengthen

the wrinkle of unlikely paths,

long states and paused continents

where my shell of hesitation

has gone to be cracked and scattered,

sun beams of a needful way

that pierce the wailing cloud

and any bloom deep is down.

Spooked mountains

crackling with animal rocks

treasures and trails in torment

windows burned by red-eyed stares

in the cabin-hacked valley

antennas are stabbing time

and the drugged wind listens

only to fleeting sounds

one waterfall in a bag

crushed moons in a tray of amber

the shriek of a salted fig

whole forest of screams

in a shovel hand

a pond in an airport runway

the twang of an escapee

singing for his supper of teeth.

Jammed full

of the dump truck's flowers,

torn blue by a wind of grace.

Frog feet

suckered to a stone fence

lichens on its fallen glory

softly glowing.

Short roads that cut

the neighborhood

to dirty diamond pieces.

Long walks with jagged bones

in a body that's barely mine

twin skies and their soft machinery

tongues of twin suns

gleaming on the goldenrod.

Rampaging over waffle irons

of imported sky,

upside down in bathing suits

that shine.

Down to jailbone

bliss whines in retracting atmosphere

my brains a blueberry

cracked in a crow's mouth,

missile-shaped clouds

racing over the sculpted oil,

long ruts that send out

numerical thought balloons,

the office of the infinite copulator

locked down with steely brine.

A vivid cloud's sharp edges

make the sky curdle

planets kissing

on the blank horizon

me dead to all human sound

in a planted chair.

Beads of weeping metal walls

forming embers and lazy letters.

Shadow bangs

on a statue's forehead

the future's roar

a painted mushroom cloud

thrashed wings

of her waiting caw.

Frozen ropes of ecstasy imagined

a leaf turned like a doll

beneath the sun-whipped clouds

ivy on concrete pillars

air balloon's ladder of ashen hands

the dove's tail between

many aggravated waves

the lips of the ripped trees.

All membrane-deep in ribbons

unseen blowing through my guided blood

tar hills within dirt valleys

and hills of raving pine

the thud of a disturbed street sign

faint far-off hallways

with pipes of song.

Leftover light

from a bargain keyhole

ripples of touched infinity

pimped out for paper gold.

Iron bulbs

glowing on the walls

of purple night,

cracked glass people

frozen on the sidewalks,

doorways dripping letters

of ironic heat,

two dogs in suspension

drifting from the previous moment

in mid-snarl, rinks

of expressive ice.

Satyrs with steak tipped limbs

modeling togas of fire,

pools of oil beaming

in the slabs of electric light,

me catching a gashed reflection.

Magnolia blossoms

on a half-dead tree,

shine gone from more

than half the leaves

but the flower radiates

the force that's left.

Scenes with missing people

where I see its petals floating

as a bright reminder.

Airport benches

masked in evil light

and the shadows

of benevolent machine guns

fall under the spell

of the desperate magnolia

files and lines of mowed-down

faint material becoming

throbbing hearts, reflected deaths

of the bloom that is a wound

to all its dying branches,

roots and gathered vines

the glory in relentless decline.

You are the light I did not choose

something strangely anointed

pillars enwrapped in bleeding vines

could not uphold or fall upon

the grace of your feline envelope

your numberless nimbus

or cape of feathered blades

I'll watch from the dock

beyond echoes

your craft moving

on a wave of many waves

the tide held back

before your lunar inlet.

Fences painted by the acid of the sky

field after square field

multiplying toward the incline

that cuts them off into the air

ferns of the soil's feeling

blowing on a cracked ledge

what the roots understand in rot

as I hold in my hand your glowing embers

jewels or some clump of hair

you left behind

to gather me like a twig

in a rolling snowball

to set me up in some galactic ray

and melt me true to form.

Branches on fire with longing

scattered on slanted

and stone-clad land

firecats with moss and mold

on their faces

supremely active

in an unknown world.

Fantasies of flesh becoming spirit

in some gnostic fuckfest

rinds of the fruit flung to the wind

bright pools of metal seed

collecting in their curves

split tongues with alarmed eyes

beatific android rule.

Call me a cab with a javelin

club down these wires intact

and flash me home.

Borrowed by

a wheel of leaves

my life pulled ever outward

by its shiny form's

corrosive ring of hearts

blade's light

on the strange revival

someone summons

cemeteries in their sleep

someone turns on the fertile engine

somebody unseen remembers

I was roasted on a vinyl trap

carved out from almost nothing

on a concrete arc

with many mouths bleeding

at dusk a streetlit magnolia

at dawn the same shine multiplied

finds me wanting

bronze baskets of lead lilies

and highlight reels

of perfectly sheltered rain,

on the outdoor mattress

thrown from an exploded window

found on a golf course

with my form naked as a broken bone

the morning with its many acorns

is spreading like oil.

The vines that sing

and the vines that claw

long ropes of baked rock

far between them

shimmering in waves

of relentless light.

The creak of a moving drawbridge

exploding with butterflies and flowers

above the water that speaks

above the water that knows all names

and fills up mysterious basins

far down beyond

the reaching and raging thorns.

Kaleidoscopes crushing hills

swirling in distempered

heat of echoes

my hand in hand paper dolls

silhouetted on the glossy light

that paints a moss drenched cliff

the zig zags

of brush tipped animals

all bolting home.

Wings in their swoops of effort

braced against ships

of rank robotic wind

flak's flowers

rhyming to the tucked in fields

that vision heals.

She was lit up

by the glow of an opal,

set apart among spoons of ivory

and stained silk ceramic jars.

Twilight provoked by fire

surrounded like a ring of dancers

hands held twirling and kicking

around the shine

of her bluebird lipstick

hoops beside her crazy smile.

Form was a rash of stars

before she had it gathered

I waited by the windows of

her ship in many tides

nosing the aftermath

like a horizon's glider

hills of wheat and

dusk swollen with water

dark light for the queen of the plains.

Let love pour through

the seething polarities

of time and space

and darkly increase them,

harp ringed by a sheer circle

of broken crescent moons,

light from unseen edges

flowing over the welcome

of fresh turned fields,

the deer in tandem lines

of frank pursuit,

eyes and tails and striped heads

shining with unscratchable glory

in their hallowed moment,

shrinkwrap of rain on glaze

on the talking highways

to smoke beneath the mud nests

on the seams of bridges

that blink at their twin

in parallel, deep in the unheard sound

of unmistakable God.

Drones with painted wings

over the subdued cities

the screaming and burning

of powerful money

smoldering in its own clutches

dimes raked into glowing heaps

by processions of pimped out

shit eaters.

No embrace unbroken

no pillar undiminished

no place of peace

in this kingdom of thieves

paid to put love in a test tube

and winningly snuff it out.

Fuck this whole landscape of humanity

fuck this frozen shard of shit

hemmed in by financial transactions.

Fuck the herds of the obedient

enslaved by life

enslaved by thin blood

and threat of nonexistence

fuck your dream of escape.

This is our own sloppy

yet strangely meticulous hell

that we built as a fucking fetish

that we built as a throne of disease

and I condemn

with the error of my departure

or swallow deep to hold

in my intestines

like a diminutive ship of light

that won't fucking leave,

The fallen fig tree

calls to a gone fast year

of spirits walking with

sky scraping stilts

on a blue horizon

my granite bench floating

on a shore of suds

has been interrupted

by a yellow wind

a thick stump yielded to ivy

a quick yawn of cherry skies

over the fisherman's perch

a chimney stacked up

to a cloud's tongue

the graft of motel utopia

love made in a neon slice

while the microwave plays classical

and the waterline's blood of clay

chalk-marks the vein of day

phone rakes the groaning mechanical acres

a holographic pocket

calls to the fig tree's maker.

Bring your taint to me,

flag the candles

with neon halos

to surround the flames,

let the schedules

of the transport

fall.

Let the sun light up

the scars of a marble floor

what was clustered

from the trash of old.

Let the arc of tied up rays soar down

through shattered stadiums

let the statues brawl.

Cascades of spider web

upon the murdered commons

thumbtacks in every iris

lassoes around each tackboard body

limbs cut into flowing grass.

Desiccated remnants

that once sang of pure ideals

and now swallow knives.

Bulging thought balloons

from chiseled shit

that communicates error.

Forked tongues frozen

to descending poles

the love that ends in total violence

for stacks of screaming scrolls.

Trails of wet coal

on concrete slopes

beneath the bridge

invite my body to go limp

and tumble down

entropic signatures

of doubtless decline.

Bent cigarettes in ditches

like the nested bodies

of beautiful girls

where I am going to align

with the great uncaring dispersal.

This is not a cry for help,

it's just a cry.

This is not a prayer,

just an exhalation

of poison air.

Beneath the chrome carriages

my disintegration will be

untouchable peace.

Beneath the printed papers

in flight from unending flatulence

the street is the soul

of a sealed world

kept clamped in a mindless rift

and the puppets can keep the gift.