Prostrate in a heaving ditch,

buried by a mound

of feathers and flowers.

Colored there by inks

that run and flick with

rumors of consciousness.

A pillow of rock

birthing urgent books

from a leather womb.

Blades from the shafts on target

ricocheting through dim

psychedelic wire.

Blues from an ancient death

reflected in mercury.

Shades of a violet hedge

rustling around a silent palace.

Risen from slug-kissed leaves,

filed in the sky's sheaf

of uncollected pages,

gone sailing on the journey

of a laughing wound.

Crescent furrowed with

luminous moss, vine crawling

gelatin bricks, palpitating

metallic walls.

Daffodil tongue

in the deep mouth

unburied for riotous summer,

stone teeth descending in erotic spirals

to the drain of a world's fond yellow fall.

Leagues of time

beneath the glinting

surface of deceptions

the brandy of air

and consciousness

has snared a singing wraith

carrying my features to a breach

in the dream's receding coral

blankets of reverberating liquid scrolls

singing praise of the vision's receivers,

joy passing from generation to generation,

high stacks of garden beds

floating in bone linked grills,

gray claws of light behind giving walls

sending plumes of many multiplying dolls

furred and painted with digital scrapings

from the cave's last wall.

Paths pouring out

of a spherical ship

that glimmers with the flank

of raw eternity

in its mirror wheels and gears,

dew-struck rubber

alive with seed of day,

lines of aging light

that go back to the engine's ring

of metallic steam.

Winged regiments in rank

melting through glass worlds,

sparks caught in distilled frenzy

by caress of the master's hand.

Roads reaching over high hillsides

the edges of green lined ditches

glinting under a raw pink sky

bones thinking and toiling

before many pages and in the midst

of many upturned carts

the signature of divine hair

turned to divine disorder

or suggesting an eternal shape

as the ferns and their elder oaks

reach from dayfall's astral fur

in a parched canyon, and in reaching

invite a flood of sweet ink,

flowerpots of gathered mud

and quills from moon-fed fields

that penetrate the veins

engines organizing eggs

a fog with pincer hands

enveloping dreamless lands.

Green heart beating in the gray shroud

of mid-winter forest,

charts and lines that speak

to my vertebrae,

hills multiplying in a sliding land

behind many awesome mountains,

cliffs talking to vines and water

frail branches of a love that's torn

growing strong in disintegrating daylight.

Fronds of the tongue that was buried

gathering like the tail of a male

peacock, scattered sections bleeding

through oily soil, beds in the valley

of flowers that have overflowed.

Plateaus capped by tar

lit softly in the dim yellow evening.

Windows gleaming radioactive steam

rails carving broad mountainsides

from thickets at the feet

to jagged pine peaks.

Nobody has ever stopped moving

in this hollow hell.

Bulbs glow from the pulse

of burning bones.

Voices flow like rolling coal

over the toilet bowls.

Butterflies quake in the reins

of an electric haze.

Smokestacks excrete black rainbows

on the bronze periphery.

Shallow cuts in the turf

broadcast an otherworldly mirror.

Reflections darken to transparency

between the evaporation

of days and nights.

The trees lean various ways:

conscious oxygen

learns the map of minds

and retracts its touch.

HYMN

Let the sun scratch my face

and let there be days of slumber

let me sleep on a long rag

at the threshold of the goddess

let the leaves fall on the fading scars

my feet leave on the earth

let waves lap like grain

at the air that gives them assistance

let there be decorative torpedoes

and suits to die in

with immaculate ease

let the machines make love

to melted bones

and the foam unicorn of alterable fate

be cast on the pool that pounds.

Let the deer continue their diadem walk

stars dying into space

limbs bracketed by blankets of fire

far past lunch and riveted

to infinite things

scraped bare for the life to come

ears rock n roll for the hand's potatoes

shale shading the moonstruck mountainside

with a masklike light.

Milk laden lands

frozen with ecstasy

neon posts uprooted in the rain

left flickering and crooked

in the paths of the inner flame

that drives the outskirts

embankments of moldy money

strewn with leather blankets

and scriptural underwear

the hosts of the prophetic gleam

bowel's music in ruined bookstalls

eroded landmark towers

in puddles of half melted coin

rescued by moss and bright

animated bones shining in salvaged paint

the crossing of rubbery staircases

under knots of tied up lightning

fissures that clench and ooze

with darkest honey

in the flanks of lost

and freshly fertile earth

the serpent of the skies

is a torn heart's mirth

and a soft train coming

with oceanic windows

and wheels of sexed medieval fire.

Lyrics of rock strips

and reefs of coral sharp as steel

cavernous rib cages

howling with the worthiness

of tarnished pleasures

the rust on a harp

twanging in twilight

while the astral corridors

across open prairies

resound with strange sneezes

and relinquish ashen wings

bricks multiply from cloud

to stained cloud

walkways

for the ascendant damned

who move between

sealed plastic offices

plucking strands of time

from vain contours

to reveal the icy light

two sets of lips in flight.

FOR COLIN MOMEYER

Two headless wonders

walking truncated roads.

Do you have a magic eraser

that writes, do you wear foam

shoes that sing?

Do the wires that cross your sky

bring you dreams abundant?

We will walk past

the clamor of many spirits

on planets of dust.

We will rush out

from ravished temples

to dangle from

the longest branch.

Oh lost companion,

oh absurd sculptor of the night,

whole sidewalks of conversation

will follow you home.

Ledges blink

with dripping living light

roots climb intersecting walls

bulbs and wires dance

in tender breezes

the void outlines

of long gone dancers

lungs of disappearing speakers

sliding out of living air

to dwell suspended in dark matter

a freak of wounded color

lacking butterfly haste

the big bang palpitating

agitated in a glass case.

Vines write on the walls

the caps and garments of prior lives

descending into glittering graves

emit sculpted steam

clench rot with heated rocks

blood painted flowers of charcoal

surface in placid eyes.

Ponds shimmer in concave plastic

pinks and blues in veils

of amphibian green

collecting channels of pulp,

short skirted books

through thinking water,

bright gloves for undiscovered bones

going limp on a dry threshold.

The rivulet between

moon shredded coral hills

resurrects lichen veins

and solitary gravestones

are gathered in a granite strain.

PROMETHEUS UNBOUND

I will wait in the nuclear vault

I will swim in the lake of fire

like printed letters coming after me

I will wait like mica in the rock

and I will wait like lava

at the core of all these consequences

running like mice

dragging down clairvoyant doors

seductive shadows adorned with necklaces

sanctuaries of the damned

dripping with concrete wounds.

At the dam's lever

where the forces twinkle

like shattered glass

let the ships pour through space like ass.

Pathways of shredded leaves

leading to a circular indent

brown glowing in the green earth.

A temple of glass

rising from cut rock

near the watery center

crystal after crystal in cracked rows

wind screaming through frozen chimes.

Forms leak

from these wounds in the landscape,

limbs flex like the belly of the sun

and turn into stringed instruments.

Tables piled high with vines

in a forest clearing.

Lonely voices wafting

out of cracks in trees.

Lover's outlines

floating where there was

no bronzed encounter,

figures dancing

floors a camera never traced.

I was hammered by a bright horizon

fleeced by a passing dream

having shined all the visible tables

having stood frozen to watch them shine

and sidewalks sliding and slithering

past crooked poles and small deserts

past lights wavering and cans tipped

toward little jungles that drink up

the leaking hacked containers

and the shapely ooze

I am alone in terrors

that are universe wide

neon framed from hubs

trembling in webs that never glisten

harps wafting whose pluck never ends

bone singing through a chain of heads

the scrubbed bus stop that never stops blinking

steep reservoir that churns with silent friends.

Sweet mystery of night, how I love you.

All territories open up within your grasp.

Shopfronts occlude with vaporous eyes,

roads going down to the ocean

guide the sinews of ecstasy

to a holy place.

Rock walls radiate moss like paint.

Channels in the dark light up

the deep insides.  The art

of commerce with eternity

blotted out to be born

a veil of twitching mouths

pronouncing serpentine sounds

the five hammers of a floating couch.

Crematoriums for the living

are in the oiled alleys

of clocked kitchens

the lips of angelic soil

and the bones of steam

that express divine speech

the feathered secrets of its calling

locked in tongues that roam

roots raging that have no home

diamonds forming in the twilight's foam.