Draw lines around the whirlpool

and the plumes of smoke,

plant lips upon the ice that speaks

retract the engine's tongue,

pour steam against the fires

that have frozen.

Watch a sanctuary climb

up through its renewing spires,

let the blueprint

knock around in your veins

before the foundation's floored.

So many outpourings lost

the sky or some further attic

frame rimmed with frosted lilac

at the exit from the woods

where trees darken fast

at headphone sundown

when spiders of tainted fluff

float in the air

and wood handles gather.

Blonde on the ax blade

the sun slants like unrhymed ivory

hones in on the heart of dirt

sweet molecules

I wrung it from them

now they wring it from me

swans flit as the cliffs pour tea.

The world freezes into words

it needs to be licked

by a tongue of mighty color

and the tongue will be ripped

and the blood will flow

and the words will melt back into form

and all tongues will be broken

by the one.

The cliff caged

by its receding wave

offers a few

half-strangled handholds,

some bitter and twisted roots

that escaped the purge

through sheer irrelevance

and sexual irrelevance,

these discontinued prototypes,

these lurching ballerinas

finding a magnetic scar.

NO NEED FOR AN ENCORE

They are all passing me by now,

every glance above infinity

every braid's bright tail.

The realm closes up like water.

Was I ever known?

Did we meet in a fog,

was even the sunlight

a fog burning off?

They never answer.

Only a strange smile

far from flirtation's

shadow, where I go

to paddle the empty boat.

Whole yards of foam

pelted by stars

long past flaming

over receded oceans

one smoker's crooked perch

in the trees beside

a granite-boxed river

suspended in red light

and vacant fire escapes

that climb through urgent wires

butterflies clenched

in nets that collapse on catching

and melt to reveal

a parting eyelid:

all converge to partake

of the moon's dark aura

and silent, non-resistant purge

as the faint wings merge.

PSYCHO

Staring at a fig tree

I am a transfigured number,

I will bestow on plants

the sanctuary of my own skin,

I will stack the fences and

polish the cruel embers

because of their killing beauty

I am renewed in form.

Steel walls are transparent

in my stone sunglasses

cliffs faint and avalanche molasses

when I step like rare snow

across the driven parking lots.

Fate was my princess once

and now the unseen master

tallows all shallow wounds

and fills them up with alabaster.

IRONIC STATION

Paving stones touched

with letters of my regret,

high triangular clouds

sculpted from pain of abandonment,

scooped valleys to libidinal mountains

glistening with aftermath of words

bright links of leaves to breeze

under the shocked veins

of the sky in entrapped transit,

as the hands that inscripted realms

in their tracked and fertile orbits

push trash cans together

in suggestive shapes

hot banished priest of Onan

dumping wine

for the water of the apes.

I drive my spike of beauty

deep in the earth

and stand alone beside it

it holds me skyward

for the gulp of gleaming mountains

cliffs of honey to find my ribs.

In the glint of cafe tables

I am a tide restless

shields of congealed dust

a web for my mouth

in its infertile shadow world

I am the root's tongue lashing

scum's furrow to find

the mapped flank of landscape

and take it cell to cell

voice crashing like an eagle's thrill.

In my jeweled cave

where numbers shine from frames

in their animal aptitudes

all objects are alive

and keep me company

the spirit flown from unliving wood

remains and flows around

on the pool's edges of sound

the fog has poles and spear's tips

holding indescribable flags.

Near the cliff's root

dewy lines of frost

catalogued with the last sacred error;

I carry a tripline scripture,

a flippant angel's

dance of grape rain,

filling up the blood readers

and bookshelf mourners

with lines that carry surgical fate.

I tramp around in the laundry screaming.

Spiders of freshly blown glass

are scattered in the afterlife.

They pulse paint, they inject

fertile wires.

I harmonize with a rectangle ceiling.

I fall to the streets with Christmas

lighting, I follow the sights that stream.

Scarred limbs

of the never belonging,

bright walls where

the cracks they reach through

sing of ancient ways.

Cattails bristling

above the swamp they eat

with stunts of time

and ticking minutes

threaded in their stalks

and splitting heads

where the air breaks bread.

Over the lens

of the next disaster

over the curb of the road

that cracked and slid

landing aboard a leaf vein

high above crashing train cars

and reverse steam.

Who came to existence

deep in laughter

if you would call me

I would let you know

I let the line die

buried in errors

I let the brain cough

snake through

a neon glow.

Her soul is a wounded fountain

wavering in the radiance

of broken rock

flowing like the roots that are near

a tree under the earth

is in her hooks and breathing.

Stern hollows are sung by blood

stern songs of the wind carved desert

its arid pride laid down

before her violin of water

and reluctant yearning

for granite unmoved by breezes

molded nonetheless

by a fierce wind's breast.

Boulders with bright little compartments

soulful meteors telephoned in

from some formerly sealed world;

brown rainbows over caves blinking

in a chain of solvent echoes

that bring kisses to a treetop wind

the longing for death doused

in shadows behind woodpiles

and burnt circles that surround roots

paths breaking with twilight water

from the peak that broke my back

hot lights from a shield of orchids

the orgiastic apartments of a dead life

long gone from my claws

and ears of a thousand singing lines

followed with hairs crackling

by the reach of ghosts set free

the one prophetic wound

came traced in an oven lit cubbyhole

tongue sketched in stone

and the orb's grid quaking

quick sparks that are arching home.

Dragon's lit breath

the cat's paws of God

or some frenzied assistant

jacket turning to a sail

the wet light of afternoon

is a thousand eyes

and the vents puff

purring and grumbling ground

I look at the thickening soup of fields

adrift on a plane of sculpted echoes

I look at a bramble suit

with sweetgum buttons

waiting to be worn.