BAD TRIP

Striped owl's head turning

killer of ladybugs

deep in the swine wind

where we are burning taffy,

tongue's flame catching

in hourglass pools,

forked flame where we end up

taking our sins out on each other,

each cemetery glade

a sunset bouquet

and lasting aftermath.

That Black Sabbath moment

you thought you wanted

came and took the coat

from your artificial sanity

and sealed your soul.

Bestow moss on the stones

that spoke slow.

Heave up a fresh barnacled anchor.

Put hammer to shore.

Watch the sparks gain red

their quadrant of yellow,

let blue have green

let the copse rain magic objects

let the colors seem.

Alone in these hills

without wife or child

I will die apart, grasping

at the roots that left behind

my sleeping heart

and the waves of sun bright pollen

will come above the tallest trees

with a script of days,

with an architectural chain

of platformed clouds

and crowns of solitude

in wandering I cannot share

and the blades are birds

betwixt an infinite fist

and the hollows of the burden

lit by sacrifices

deeper than molecules

of a vagrant water,

of the deer's kiss of cautious eyes

in a puddle-split distance,

breeze working enlivened grass

where she won't lie down

but I keep the lines tight

as crucifying dawn

the lips of a lingering fracture

a spider's nest of roads

traversing stone.

I am haunted by the images of love

no longer accompanied.

By days gone missing their frame

of hours and faces.

Torn sheets cloaking

an angry cloud

a yawning mouth of cracked stars

limbs of glass

and sunrise teeth

clutching a raw gemstone.

I have watched the gaze of love

go down to hell and pick its flowers there,

I have seen all the love die.

And watched all else ascend

through aching whirls of sky

that felt more than the falling body.

I have watched the clouds

come pluming upwards through the streets

I have seen them spell no name at all.

Bright arcs of leftover sunlight

ride with them in my memory

and resurrect my soul.

The scroll of lost days

grows wider and wider

on the paving sheen.

The mirages bloom.

I find her behind a shield of vines

I find the long walks on a thin stem of concrete

I find the rustling paper of a dream

I lost from her

that she wrote in a glass hour

from a streetlight's answer

and a bronze caged alley sigh.

I give my glories

to the wind

that takes them away,

I give my seeds of light

to the darkest soil.

Manifest in veins of breakage

the hilltops sneeze with fire.

Liquid bright gymnasiums

dissolve on riveted horizons

the sighing in rows of chairs

bells rung from a high computer

netherworlds mapped in the snakes

of some alien covenant

the heads of helmeted steam

that overlook the bureau;

no thinking thing,

no decisive fragment

can overcome the wrath of days

let the hymns fall fast intact

and the depth of dammed rivers

govern.

Her face opens a wound

it rubs itself deeper.

I was a corpse walking

until I smelled her scent.

The breeze is a language

that makes my bright cold orbs

bleed.  The removed world

of past loves gone

makes the flowers move.

Around my soul

I play the dizzy animal.

In the gardens of lavish rot

I am the watermelon.

Coins land in a fountain

far from me.

The marble sneezes.

The sky froze

open wide.  I want

the honey in the center

of the hive.

I dreamt once

what it might be like

to be a man.

Years roll over that outline

crush by crush

and the brush rolls

dark lanes over my soul.

Miles past the spilled gardens

I planned this desert

for lonely architecture

long planes and bright nubs

of denied sun

long blades of a walk that circles back

for no searching echo.

I love the kudzu coated trees

and deep sweet hills of Georgia

honeysuckle blooming

in the dark gray night

of moon bathed moss

this painful song that I

am dawning with

the face in the chopping block

blue and bald and gold

into the carousel of twilights

window's beams where we are in chains

across the yawning sheets

the plains I am a grafted part of

scattered on the tousled earth like sweetgum

blank stare of a granite owl

atop a gravestone

feathered square in a ring of fire.

The eclipse when she looks away

leaves metal in its shade

and sparkling outline

blue stones colliding

in a lit gray sky

sure footed statues

on a boiling edge

bricks of hot television

tumbling down an infinite throat

stars pinched like salt

in a wreath of speaking fingers

the lines of light cross like heavy rain

her hair and her face are overtaking

the fullness of dawn is a slice

of the firmament's mover

alleys eating marble and rubber reels

arcs where arrows marked the footpath

new floor of her standing smile.

Tumescent flesh

growing around the outskirts

of a banished soul,

body partaken with

the mouth of mountain lightning,

a frail shell and its licking fibers,

talk dancing on a gun sight,

a train of smooth bright shells

crawling over planetoid dusk.

I know the dark

from its beginning

the fragile waves

dispersing splinters

in the glad light

soaked springtime overcoming

one wood grain

and ripples all.

I know the rain's shelter

curves of tar and rail

lit ranks of rising floors

soaring from a blasted swamp.

And under the mudwasp nests

pursed liplike on concrete

clutched with a pen

by a hand of thorns

I rise up

and launch my bloodied remainder.

Bring your pearls and lace of ancient ways

the goblet with tornado force

suspended on a floating square

bring mirror furs

and thriving purple octagon

to the dance of silver necklaces

in an expanding eye.

In the rings of ascending birth

where I keep turning up

like a bad penny

meet me halfway to earth

on a shapely cloud

with juggernaut armchairs

lilac lasers that leave glowing marks

and the underwear of Saturn.