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.