Vines have carried my bones away

evaporated eyes float out to misty eternity

sand of burnt flesh licking a globe of glass.

While symphonies crawl into match boxes

and the claws of cats walk water

in serene pink tubs,

I sit on a cartoon couch

that swallows me up with tongues.

Crystal teeth send sparks and splinters

over the machines whose gears they chew

bodies filling up with conscious glue.

SATAN

Satan came to Earth after an absence of several thousand years, and found himself a famous scapegoat. Confronted by suspicious mankind, He noted that their gods had not served them particularly well. "I see that the rumors are true: no wickedness of mine in Hell could ever compare with the princes of religion here. And since my kingdom then cannot serve its ultimate function, I have abandoned my forces to their wiles and resigned myself to a term of fresh experiment on Earth." And mankind, having tired from so many millennia of torment under their deities, was surprised to find that he seemed a most reasonable man, and much like themselves. "I will play God" he now proclaimed, "but if you tire of my reign, thou art welcome to try and dethrone me, as I would enjoy the struggle; and I like you when you are in a revolutionary mood, and willing to suffer." Mankind, restless and skeptical, contemplated this when he further proclaimed: "I see that your numbers are diminishing; that you are ruled by the old and the corrupt, they that practice the white arts, the arts of false holiness; and yet their reign has wearied you, as much as it has wearied them; neither can overthrow the other. And so this is my covenant to you: I am going to remove all your control mechanisms. I am going to show you how to unleash chaos in your women, and from them how to renew it in yourselves." And mankind, though stunned and bereft of all religion, seemed fascinated by these ideas. "You will build altars, but the shape and meaning of them is all left up to you. One warning I give you only: above all, I desire to be entertained, and to remain entertained. I understand that the reign of the Gods has left you dull and commonplace, so I will be patient with you at first: but thou must entertain me, and entertain me well. I trust you will." And the masses, unsure of what to do, went about in search of fresh costumes.

In the beginning, the image was with God. And the image was of the feminine: and the feminine was life. The Word, Logos, was given to man that he might use it to pay proper tribute to the feminine. But man made an idol of this tool, and prostrated himself before the Word: he gave it all his worship, and the feminine, neglected by action in favor of speech, began to wither up. The man noticed her weakness, and invited her to lay down beside him and join him in worshipping the Word. "It will give us strength" he said. "It will show us the way" he said. And although Eros had her doubts, she was now too weak to resist the rhetorical temptation. She lay down beside him, not touching, just side by side in the dust. And the name of this story is the death of the west.

They cut me in half

and stuffed me full of scripture.

They put me in a mailbox

with my dick sticking out of my mouth.

I came out of a dumpster

in a greasy tuxedo.

My tongue was in my pants

and the national disease

had inked its way into my skin

beneath the tousled glamour.

I was a prophylactic hammer

and the walls that came down

mostly came down on me.

They startled me with monotony

and I put them to sleep with flight.

Pillars cloaked with kudzu

tell the tale of things left alone

become more beautiful.

A lizard rests on leaves

enwrapped on stone,

I like his eyes.

I like precisely his inhumanity,

his blank impersonal caution

and indifferent inquisitiveness.

Stay there, little one, I'm not

coming to capture you

or put you in a jar.

I just want to watch the beauty

of something alive

that does not care about human beings.

I'm down here with the scum of the earth

where I belong.  There is time yet

to eclipse your world of lies,

by working in darkness.

New demons to trump old gods,

topple rotting regimes.

Rise in the sand like a panther.

Recreate the sun, only to die

under its invigorated blaze.

Try to break the lunar circuit,

get a refracted spleen.

Persist without reason.

Yield to nothing.

Clotted metals from destroyed planets,

gathering to shine in unruly hair

and make bloody ball bearings,

flowing over surprised flesh

and stealing tender organs

from this wounded labyrinth

of racing blood,

clouds pooling in wounded space

to form celestial escapees

against the limits of milk and its math,

thrashing at the darkened witless membrane,

making the intelligence of love

ripple under bombs like water.

I remember the failure of space,

a trickster prancing down a beam of fate

the costume of the goddess

trashed by bleeding cities

shining in seductive fragments

walking halls that I don't know

to appear here in the courtyard

of the frozen aristocracy

aligned with topaz eyes

from only lunar skies

and the silver lawns

of sleeping pawns

in the lines of a lunatic's palm.

The carnival of darkness

abides in beds of rich violet,

rears up with many heads

and unseen limbs,

doll's eyes vomiting soil

with a milk of metallic hue,

and I sit at my desk roofless

in a tar-caked wasteland,

waiting to see those among the dead

who would fall with me

back into this world

and rip its vain belltowers down.

Softly I refuse the dead,

put up on shelves

new parcels for the living

who have empty hands.

On a fine wire over the blooming hills

dropping blades and origami

the burnt skin on hot medallions

claws of shadows all emerging

from a shattered grain of sand.

I'm a raindrop on a leash

these paths are the trails

of ecstatic boulders

I wash artificial skies

with a foaming nozzle

I watch the real blood run down

the potato chip walls.

My self portrait is a room of repellent jewels

the prerecorded rainstorm's

crashing hallways behind other rooms

where the real tight spiritual machinery

churns the light into glowing taffy.

After all my lives have fallen apart, after all

my twisted attempts to be human have failed,

I come to this cave that bisects time

watching shit-streaked wings flow out of me

to shudder in their improvised bones,

making sure the center is always

in the wrong place, colors

empty of form for glory

scaffolds mounting over makeshift suns.

The streets were hollow

and strewn with hail.

I had my soul thrown

through your doorstep

by pallbearer hyenas

snickering in shiny suits.

You were puzzled by

the veiny wallpaper

and the rivers that coursed

between rooms.

The ogre who carried your silks

wore my face upside down.

The cups of froth

on the windowsill

began to foam and flowed

across the deep fake grass rug.

I clawed synthetic minnows

from its blades

and brought them to your mouth

for you to taste the electronic lake.

You spat electrodes singing

in my face and made a paste of me

to bless the dark material beds

that sink with galactic fissures

stretching vagrant space.

The blossoms come like little fists

this year.  The fabric torn

still has more forms to push.

Threads of mangled inertia

still pierce the wall of nothingness.

I see my face on the dying side

that the dawn hides.

I view the bloom

from somewhere far away.

If you can see me deep

inside this multiplied ravine, send me

the warmth of an echo, send me

the variance of the marching heart

when it trickles to the outskirts.

In the veins of the earth,

waiting with a helmet,

cape and spear.  Trades of the surface

all banished from possibility now.

The shine of furniture,

vibration of hidden knives,

the swinging chains of fortune

all carrying a meaty hook.

From the shade

of disheveled metaphysics,

the gathered stalks

grown from a seed of blood,

my mustache exits reality

the rhyme-raked mirror remains.

Fists full of pink flowers

thorns that intertwine

behind pouting lips

the swollen walls of the house

left behind above a smoking ruin

on a high and sloping cliffside

detached from the town of wires and pipes

soul's form is the sheath of the blade

that cuts away all.

Glass shards on a tar stained concrete hillside

seams leaking poisons to remake the world

painted lines pointing

to some splattered fortress walls

no message from the obsolete numbers

stacked high in thick fluorescent tides.

I am a remnant of banished America

you can tell by the clever shape

of my mutating scars

walkways lead to the insensate grinder

I watch from the weird strength

of twisted trees

I creep under humming concrete bridges

with my sacks of rejected merchandise

making robotic battery powered spiders

that recite the Constitution of Hell

blue jays and bright red cardinals

are landing on the smoking line

where I am jolted

drinking your intoxicated messages

now burst and fading to some greater sky

I see roses that are flames

on the lips of the dead of the earth

and the speech of days past

scattered among pages left behind

city squares left empty

with painted pavements

high windows home to the ghost

looking out alone from wounded portals

tongues of memory are blades in the air

scents of kisses withdrawn

are the thorn in every cushion

cute mechanics of excreting corners

seams of living beams

lashed to the levels of descending hives

Eyes turned into the guts

nightclub to nightclub

carrying the colors

that we'll wear into the reptile dark

coiling around fecund foundations

piercing flesh that elevates

a cage of blinding light

from funnels in the deep unknown above

that filter thick angelic blood

to shapes on shelves of dust

blinking with injected life

fading fast in fragments

each bright shard in its reflecting box

I ripped a box out of my head

dumped out the golden thread

that squirmed in cotton insides

while the ornaments were sprayed with soul

cabins of glass in vapor

looking over graves that squirm

handles that lift up the earth

submerged in ways of fire

filth a roving eyeless claw

I've been turning to the times

when we were mysterious,

letting all the scenes of love cluster

above ten trapdoor clouds.

Moving with my ghosts

over slick silent cafeterias,

table to table picking up empty glasses,

waiting for the light that spells my name

and burns a day's layer of skin.