Cheap apartment jewels

chain links emerging

in the layers of red gas

descending Jupiter's robes

in an orb of entranced anti-gravity

playpens for the bones of outcast souls

soaring over vine-broken equipment

cells and their lust for water

pythons gulping eggs

where wet wings languish

lines gone jagged

on a quake broken highway

tar dripping way to land

retaken by trees

long lanes of dappled ground

evaporating speech

nights and their hunger

on sleep bag benches

scraped nights of a light bulb moon

This pale moth eaten planet

still has a few twilight sparks

the menacing threshold is a string that plays

with my rubber clad metallic skeleton

I will take Cloud Springs Road

through the bliss of hellfire

I am the snake on the stick

unfurled eternally

this mateless abandon is the painter's wheel

these seeds that glint like bullets

are a message unknown

the itchings of this vast and fractured womb

the bump of hills in a tiny mirror

heaps of gravel radiant in neglect

poles aslant above electric wreckage

the tongue erected from a sleeping tongue

a pearl of many seas

hacked veil flashing from world to world

seams bleeding screen printed fireworks

the blade's edge in a swarming iris

notching the umbilical spine

Bitter worm of consciousness

see the streetlight flowers

let go of the planet skin.

Ghostly vapors dancing

on a wooden glove

three stories high

stuck to a melted hill

chains of daylight and black

feathers of night gone.

Cartoon lips breathing

from the flicking of an ancient film

desk lamps ticking with tender mercy

of solitude's divine

and nameless wish alive

in long blue flame

the threads of an untouchable climb.

Summer is leaving me softly

gray clouds shattered by sun

are distilled in glass

five nets of oysters flying through the air

break on the prow of an iron dream

with rising portholes

crowned with frozen steam

overlooking a silk mattress

of cooling foam and flashing flowers

on the borders between teeming worlds

your singing mouth a chrism

where I go to be gently scarred

soft arms in a shark's tooth necklace

baptism in undeterred blood

wide shores of interlocking lights

moon shine on turtle shells

and pelts of deer

songs climb down the chasm

of these weapon walls

where the sacred oil falls

like hesitant water

unbound in your tumbleweed

of bending rhythm

may the basins of bright time

release and shine

autumn's height of departure

with a thimble on a crimson crest

tipping slightly over.

Grapes fresh from the vine

crushed against the frame

of days anointed by

a multitude of tongues,

fronds from the cliff of green

that elevates my vertebrae

through encircling black hair,

up through the clouds that speak

and the clouds

that become searching limbs,

wetness of days on the wane

that emit a twilight shimmer

by guardrails of some activating

words that are always missing

from the passage of wings

over lonely courtyards,

each of my ears is a bird skeleton,

I go to the ships of bronze

shifting interspatial tablets,

I go to the arms of her earth

who moved the broomsticks

and the waving hands,

I go to her turning over

buckets of clean linen

as I run in dreams,

I go to her tub of mercy

as an ancient spirit anxious

to shed the solitude of flesh

and wield her hands on me

like a waiting sign

and a flower from the howling grave.

Paths are carving through the coils

of deep wet woods

swamp's fever of vine flowers

reaching through metal fences

and floating bones

the cursive link

between times is formed

of melted gold among dancing blades

love made on a sandstone bridge

in wreaths of criminal twilight

for those who resist a common death

and ride a fiery saddle

through a lunar escape

the knuckles of deific fingers

popping like bombs

my hiding place of intertwining tendrils

emits a pained antenna

to a wrecked world where

one glowing siren

imperturbably cooks the air

with rivers and waterfalls of dark

dark hair and purifying stare.

If there are still mermaids singing,

if my feet will float above the ground

to take me to my ship of angles,

if the veins of leaves

blowing in a purple wind

will turn me into articulate smoke,

maybe the rocks will speak for themselves

and pour like concrete,

maybe rivulets of hot ink

will bisect the raging sun and suck me in,

maybe the ground will sin with me

against the dying day

and stringy devils live again

in my swooping songs.

Maybe the walls will blow like wands

and the museum of ice

become a lasting bronze.

Your beauty is heavenly.

Out here in the circling driveway,

I sweep up the shattered mirrors,

I long for your face behind

clear unbroken glass, the cruel

engines hum around us.

What do I know of heavenly beauty

in your feline form?  All I know

is a series of desperate dreams,

each with a succulent imprint

and a sweetly wounding name.

Let me in to your dipped darkness

and the brine of your planetary fulcrum

that men and mobiles and beaten buildings

fly past as your delicious orbit increases--

vivid daughter of earth, send me the days

of your smile and your strut

across foot-blessed floors.

Wild nights are gone

beneath a floodlit scene of funerals

for nameless dead dancing on film

I encounter empty fields

spilled popcorn on green grass

old fashioned techno music

in my rerun dreams

we ran from party to party

on crooked country roads

with neon platform islands

where our timely incantations

were repeated and understood

those times have been blown to hell now

and maybe they never happened

I was laughing on a sex drenched

fire escape walkway

black ladders pulled up from the street

like leather belts or some unseen photo reel

in those pictures I am dying in slow motion

I've got a notion the fireworks are all exploded

and I'm alone at the bar and the bar is abandoned 

deep in some night that never arrived

I pause to drink a flashing flask

of disappearing water

and write this on polished wood

that's going dull beneath the curling paper

Hills grow from the ripples of the earth

stems in a torn mouth

beckon to vivid clouds

for dark oceanic weeping and

pierced pillars with viaduct roots

radiating torn concert posters

myriad tongues of dirty mercy

the moss floors of flowing cool canals

sag to the curb and watch

cranes lifting elegant gutters

feel my poor fingers

on the length of your multiplying spine

sip the soda of eloquent corpses

distilled to the roil of their final songs

the river through the graveyard

is long with many turnings and

the glint of many fragrant metals

heat of somber lips where an eclipse

boils and runs

the sun drips radio error

two notes for a high-strung ton

this risen clump of rabbit bones

and reptilian dung

stretched wide with violin eyes

where the moon is a wire hanger

and a singing black hole is hung

Let the light frost of December

write its prayers into a higher ground,

may the empty heights

reflect the mirror of the heavens

clouds of blue and skies of yellow dust

the shine of an unshared park bench

rails of granite up against

the swollen pond's frozen beach

the reach of jagged paths

diamond eyed owls

in the hard fought woods

footprints of marble radiance

along the glowing green intertwined

of falling and rising trees

in sheaths of erotic moss

bright city's distant glaze

an ice bouquet of water torches

frayed rind of its light

on insistent gray

as the tracks to eternity fade

under the dome of days.