I walk back and forth

in a house of ice

trembling at the blades

of electrode rays

that come through the floorboards

casting all my dreams

upon the wall

taking me to ships

that cross the caverns of the earth

the soul speaks in old books

lost in the rhythm

of a classic record

all the tombs are turned inside out

a voice flies up like a flag

above the colored waves of sand

above the sheets of metallic paint

the ghost of my bones is in

these harvested hills

nestled in their question mark green

around their wearying waters

what flourish do we bring

to the dance floor of all erased rails

black lights on a blood blue door.

Curves of light breaking

on my body,

lifting me into the realm

of the remembered dead.

A sidewalk paved straight

through a celestial sky,

birds of sound without bodies

scattered from the throat of God.

To where the blade is speech,

and me in acid rain

the lonely remainder, bereft

of all companions in the glow

that our kind make of night.

What happened to my grace, my

sweetness, my love of people?

They were lost to a field of bones.

Lost to the glint of pearls before swine,

to a hot burglar within my blood,

to aisles laden with mirage

the shine of disinfected substance.

Drifting in mercury letters,

cursed by black sand

on the back of a battered dove.

Beads of worn ivory teeth

trickling over sheet mail gloves

and the milking of barren guts.

Glaze of daylight like a fist

above the green waters.

Vinyl moon above a cliff curve

all the fire this tongue deserves

poured down through nets

of hot galactic nerve

through piercing seeds and eggs of rain

veins dancing with a chill

sublime monstrosity

decked out in prophylactic frills.

I am always drawn into darkness

always with the diseased and dying

in their decay,

staggered by foggy lights from beyond

our far-off outskirts.

All agonized things with claws,

all feathered blades that turn,

long neon hallways

where an unfamiliar muse

goes looking backward,

docks of dashed boats and jagged

tongues of broken pottery

reels of time lashed

to a revolving door,

cracked souls that sing to the ceiling

of their common tomb.

What was I chasing through kingdoms of spirals

shimmering walls of glass that sing

lip-struck edges of stacked pages

canyons of metallic string in coiled rows

kisses that cracked paint

the flicker of electric eels

ticking from the buckets of the damned

and the rags that refine a highway

all resolved into a lucid shell.

Black soda in a fractured room

day dim through painted windows

I see the sea-scraped bubbles of light

that are aloft in evidence

I sweep myself away

with a redheaded eye

when all the deaths have not killed me

I will not be able to find

the chamber of solitude

having vomited my reptilian mask

on the silk-screened mountains

out of control through solar shafts

that bisect a circular door

and eject a worm god

allegiance to the ember

of a winning fraud

and a blade of restoring mercy

cuboid temples

to the dancing days of an electrode

frocked by a praying mantis strobe

the glory of souls that sail alone

hot playlist in a flying car

the grid's pulsating neon

void of sound

for a hot tub moment

marooned against these

puritan millennia, this sweetly waning

mirror of days.

Slabs of agony from past lives

all landing on the reconfigured vessel,

soap bubble eye of body

staring through the arrows of rain

in a flashing force field

scanning panes of light

sharpening bladed hands.

The light at the end of the tunnel

is a cemetery.  Rails of granite

run like a tape recorder.

The warmth over death

is a miracle.

Marble benches mirror

my falling bones.

Somebody's features laughing

are trapped within it,

the network formed

by leaning branches

is alive at work.

I love the smell of burning plastic in the morning.

The ridge glints with gold, it is not imaginary.

Beauties conceal themselves

in the fortress cliff face,

it goes deeper.

Caves lick at the earth with molten mouths

swallowing histories and armor

mystery strengthened by the horror of time.

My story lost in the overlapping

entanglements of man,

under a million distorted tales.

And for the beauty

for the chiming harmony

of all these discordant things

an eel nestled in an inkpot

webs of light bursting

from an old tobacco urn

the wineglass tipped empty

on a brick hearth

with no lips or fire left

metal rainbows from a bone cage

shelves of magnetic mercury

soul's layers lingering in place

yet wavering at the call

of a deeper fall.

A drop of blood blooming on ruin.

Five fingers for the torn

hand that counts down.

Ripples in the rock

that will not yield.

Ways left behind on earth

that carve through space.

Years growing deep and strange

porous with dreamlike exits

photos of italic wind

articulate without bones

moving in a lack of lungs and teeth

the taste of rails that guide the morning

and swords of plastic joke

that choke the night

cells weeping in another life

tongues brushing dusty stone

afloat on solid darkness

a peacock's fan of beds

and tousled heads

arrived along electric lines.

Looking back

over the list of my footprints

I see machine fragments,

long red threads tied

to radiant black arrows,

bones carrying obscure script,

photo book shaking in the robot hands

of this crooked cast-off piano,

tables talking to paper-draped walls,

knobs winding multicolored wires,

plastic sheets of numbers

that were zig zag souls

coalescing in these ragged rolls

moon's laser through a window of iron

glass gone to the tar of bronze

glaze ejected from high strung vapor

raging pine sap past the love of junk

and the maze above.

Whitman's barbaric yawp

was a prophecy of rock n roll

I step out through glass doors

scanning all the rooftops

and the hilltops

tapping all the keys that lead

to an isolated stairway

ascending gelatinous clouds

and the sparks flying upward

of a raw subway

and I am the battered

blue dawn rising

creaking through

rotten mountainous throats

with zinc lined whorish

trumpets of healing

America, sit on my face

sing me your foolish song

for a rascal's taking

violet blushes like curtains down

to the frail apex of every town

rolling tar and daffodil tongue

my singular soil.

In the beginning was the image.

The word followed some time later,

and the word was not God,

and the word was not with God.

The word was man's,

and he put his stamp on everything.

Names can be a kind of refinement,

but now we are possessed by names

and nobody can find reality.

Things and creatures are

saddled with names, but they

are not the names themselves.

It helps to know this.

It hurts to know this.

Our genocide is in our names,

it rides on our interpretation.

Words do not define, they can only

at best caress meaning.

The fabric of existence stretches over my grave

like fiber optic cobweb.

Blood yearns for mercy

from these violated particles

that make up a churning sky

and build an envelope of linked blades.

The illusion of a limitless source,

of a divine ground for physical being,

is in my cosmic underwear

and nucleic core.  Confusion

of beauty with goodness

hangs a noose adorned with flowers

above the howling void.

Even your aching spirit

has been formed into an android.

You look upon the surface of my eyes

with the secondhand anxiety

of a dying god.

I am your fear of reflection

turned into madness.

I'm in the earth, I'm in the earth

vomiting blue light from parched

amphibian vessels.

I'm the coffin of the things

you never saw.

Cracked sky steaming on painted gravestones

barefoot walking in a suit of wet leaves

bars of moving shadows

licking over her recumbent form

streambeds of frozen chalk

crossed by prints of ragged shoes

high arches of razor thin silver

glinting shore to shore.

The shroud of breaking roots

that hover around in pieces.

Threads ascending with a bloody lisp

into a ruptured sky.

Bone bridges shining with borrowed light

across a seething purple canyon.

Eyes that never saw the soil

impaled on plastic.

I am older than your gods.

At the source of this wrenching poesy,

at the crux of crossing astral trains,

in the swarm of spirits

showing their astral teeth,

I simply drink from a deeper well.

Your civilization has accomplished much,

but when it ends my voice will go on,

and yours will not.

A weapon for artists,

distilled in the soul

and passed through ages

like a dreaming dream,

this knowledge of temporal flux

smashed open continually by beauty

unaligned.

The sparkling void

a bottomless cup

an hour with wings

and the rest of the day buried

fire surfing on fire

rods of gold bent low by the river

curtains of glass

reacting to a dream of speech

tongues and their drum of the infinite

echoes framed by new flesh

lines of energetic penetration

writing from beneath the soil

a knife's blade and its curse of neon

bars preserving an imprisoned soul

the clench of blood that never answers bone

time and its peak outside eternity

the rages of a sucking vault

links of the milk train lagging

springing into notes of their own

above the sacred cloud.

On the cusp of a great new kingdom

drunk on purple vapor

in the piss-back of the garage that's rocking

long fingers of sight sprint flashing

through a planet-wide forest

crooked bones jigging on a rope of raw space

ruts where Venus lowers her gun of grace

and takes the powdered wig of fate

stars commence around a rotating stain

gray gashes give a blue sign

wheels torn from a remembered pine

the freedom strings had in breaking

never matched the flash of the golden chain.

Lonely American Edward Hopper shadows

bright porch pockets of light

suffused into divine compartments

and silently staring eyes

riding the raging tide that speaks

of many metals

rails that reach under hills and

passionate mountains

laundromats churning turning over time

tickling its starlit belly

putting its raw epiphany

up high on a neon crucifix

sand that glitters on a reckless tongue

machines that breathe

hot air from rigid gills

tendrils to tap electric groaning

enamel pails thatched thick

with piled silver nails

rusted hammer heads

on notched broom handles

cream stacks of cheesecake layers

reamed horizon's bloody gleam.

I walked on empty roads with music

pummeling my head, the

psychedelic patterns of ejected eggs

the sound of rivers I have never seen,

the ground tucked into a folding hole,

the halls of far gone New Hampshire,

a blue gash in the fading gray,

the bell yields, the oars give

a low transparent lick,

the street bulbs pulse

to a roaming beat,

the horns of light kiss,

horizons are shuffled by pale meat,

tubers cross with poison souls,

bronze water speaks,

afflicted families rise from dust,

the cost is a wailing call.