071: The flower thief, part 2

Nuclear heart to be cherished
from a safe, dim distance,
as my eyes beckon late evenings
to conceal what's trapped
in a jaundiced gaze,
birdcage of field flowers drowned
in bile from the pig liver of love.
Presiding over an empty court,
I decree transmutations
for coercion, golden concrete,
owner of what shouldn't be,
nosebleed the loneliness
- mind ravish the body -
and jet black choler, the mortar
to fix the battered bulkheads
and face-lift the facades
of a soured Magonia.
Born from the egg
inside the skull of a stepchild god,
my sketch antihero, persona of null,
everyday war against landfill dragons,
splintered sword still sharp,
he feeds the leech of pulsing life,
stuck to a bloated vein,
subway shafts encompassing.

Vision comes as thief and judge and jailer,
a spoon in the murk of days,
red cloud to the sun, a backward light,
barbed wire dreamcatcher
evolved to raven feathers,
metronome the string of captured moments,
living life, a collection of seconds.

055: Haiku

Append missing time

to a blemished résumé -

hell is a mirror.

[Written long ago, slightly altered.]

054: Cave into me

Cave into me from the flowing blackness

behind subway windows, reflective of desire,

when the eye is lashed - dream trap ecstatic,

when I make up new geometries,

you're the golden ratio to my arch of dust.

Will you let me go, let me jump off the chaise,

run away with the driver, frail wings careless,

let me bloom into the egg shell man

I was meant to be, a poison seed

engulfed in turbid amnios.

We'll birdwatch and trainspot the apocalypse,

tired with a passion on Monday mornings,

a sordid mind's springs unwind so weary,

till we grow old and boring

and the universe puts us to sleep.

046: Torn

Extract the truth,

like a tooth

- a fire lash

outstretching

the horizon -

and drive the sword,

though the sea boils

with icebergs

charred.

The house I built

with sprinkles

of heaven

and pockets of forever,

between subway stations,

insane with wine,

drunk with madness,

loosens

at the seams.

My harbor

from atom storms,

forgive me,

as my days

are links

of bronze chains;

swimming

in the quicksand,

these astral rooms

have everything but doors.

A blessed life,

my heart's tempest,

the dream tempted

to compress infinity

in single

seconds

and no beacon

in the distance.

Slaving in freedom,

burning in thirst,

a vice of the soul -

I still shun this cup;

I know not;

I deny;

unkempt, unquenched,

mirror nemesis.

045: Living inside me

Standing on the pier

that pierces the seam

of a sea of stone,

sacrally alone,

starflesh dives the rim.

Breathing caves of fear,

housed in crumbling lungs;

if I dare pry,

hear the crystal cry,

bells of waking rung.

Trickling dusk draws near

and heralds the dark night,

lightning in the soul,

imprint in the coal,

the end in living light.

Stabbing steps do sear,

disease march 'cross the ice,

every breath, a knife,

still, the kiss of life,

building paradise.

044: Words for weak flesh

Awakened

by somatic whispers,

cavern lung

caving in,

coiled by the black,

every breath,

a shovel racking

moist mud.

Strings of seconds,

shapeless, nameless,

rendering language useless,

always present

at the hours' cross,

sickness is,

silence exists,

clawing at the sun,

creeping through the seams.

Full speed ahead,

into the ice,

oceans of onyx

prepare the trail;

today,

tomorrow,

yesterday,

a memory

blown away

by a sour mistral.

This is a war

of still frames,

never fatal,

always wounded,

gleefully sullen

beneath a nova sky.

Ballast emote,

blast of emotion,

say the word

that's yet to be,

wriggling through the red

into the blinding

filament,

incandescent,

carrying on,

drown,

explore,

indulge / resist.

041: No name

Black pearls washed ashore,

runes carved in driftwood

from an island without trees,

pins on a map, epicenter

of a mythical nowhere,

solar tears whence the sky

drinks the sea dry.

Words about words,

tempt to paint a lash

in Mayan blue, no rhyme,

a wake so dark, a fall so deep,

awake or dreaming

lost in fog, a reality,

in questions of time spent.

Spitting out cupfulls of bile,

black lung haunted by fear,

look into the rising sun,

beyond shivering green,

a wordless answer lurks

where white whales spurt

and the moon drowns.

034: We will never meet again.

Step by step on the electric treadmill,

an electric tombstone epergne

in a funeral of watts and what ifs,

cask laid bare like a pirate ship

ghosting in the unbreezed milk, without refusal.

And few extol the throbbing thread

of vivid smudge by sprawling palms - tendril tight,

internal to digest the charging tides

that ooze and roll throughout

lives of commutes and numbed prayers,

in conked out breath, condemned and wishful;

lifelines connected in needle eyes,

sowing strips of spent skin and dried digits,

seams in desert camouflage outfits

and noose neckties curdling a dirge pattern.

Another pint of Greek fire concurs,

submerging the candle, nurturing the rage

to spit in saturnine hunger with a stabbing spine

spitefully built against the dexter branch.

Hark! Your fixtures are graves of ice,

your speedways slope into incisive winds

that jag against our fragile flesh,

so boil and distill - and let only such elect few

as pollen drops be spared from consumption,

for flashlights are futile in the conquering dusk,

appropriated house of fog, where hunters stalk and nail

mere exhales of long-gone gods;

in the churchyards and broken plains

of this earth never will you find me.

031: Perched on the sill

In a slow scuttling breach,

mild leer of shimmer peak,

toast to the health,

as dragons clash,

and obfuscate face in silver shards.

Lance a rope ladder

to the tempest rush,

broken bottle neck dibs

a bronze coin flip.

Dam sour streams in my pulsing bulk,

in his drain I've slaked

far too long.

Screwed driver, asleep

on the wheel, stern against

tender innards.

I've ground and gritted to karst

on muck road miles

on the science of fiber in action

to botch revolutions,

springs spun sinister,

undone metabolic.

I've mustered mobs and armies,

filling nil with clamour from their mouths in rot

and parting brakes to gauge

whether the sun will fuse

feathers of lead.

Read canine spill scribbled on pages

of diaries oiled sky crimson, to expand function,

outstep logic

and razor rust dull;

and who would align to seek debris of me

in the resplendence

left over when the grime is purged?

028: The flower thief

With trembling hands on the viscid scape,

to never spoil a precious petal,

pickpocketing sights in subway cars to relive,

to recreate card chapels of sincere prayer,

of unbecoming words trepid of loss.

Modulate memories in gold and black like she was,

thoughts to fornicate in sagging anthills,

escalade in grasshops a private mountain

straying the escarpment of a lost Naraka

whence cells crystallize in human tidbits to be

a feeble abode of instinct and love

and culled fear, skulking in cherry groves.

Here, a collection of coincidences

ascribed to paths of stars and cold bodies,

in a neonate game, older than my forefathers;

here, a bardo trap, a keep of comforts

of empty presents from a wishlist in tar

that spells like a last will protruding

through cracks in my undying joy.

Within gardens of evil and hope,

roots of rage reel to acquire frail flowers,

pollen of pictures in blood ringing

on the limbs of butterflies washed in sunfire.

Test the finites of absolution, alpha and omega

in one single consummate image, nerve induced

through the pupil of the third eye.

027: Amber

I subtract another brick

from the dank foundations

of your mansion cenotaph

to coalesce spazzed tension.

It collapsed in seaward breeze

as a waiting game missed,

reveal your features binary,

your tempest embrace dissed.

Distraught your elysian effigy,

rooted guilt in seams;

now and in aeon moonskin denied

the solace of the mean.

Inner workings of a manic queen

spearhead in vision songs,

occult forgiveness the earth knows,

lead us where we belong.

026: Empyrean damp

The tape is torn today.

Attire your life, still fits like a glove

encapsulated in blood tartan bearing threads,

autumn leaves shelling finite encompassing.

Knuckles redden in the mud of jest songs,

commuted ends of microscopic worlds

and wishful violence - butterfly wings.

According to nails, a vertical borehole

from the stem that aborts sandstorms,

you dig and dig, towards the black bone,

to find a scoreboard answer dry.

Tag. You're it.

Full speed ahead and the captain shouts

restraining orders, passengers selectively deaf,

blue murder sprinkled on cone cells.

Re-emerge from the drill shaft to find a dimness stained,

displacing stars, an iridescent graffito spells fracture.

Shoot you down with my silver bullet file,

inside your protection reach, a trail of cruelty,

shovel shallow graven, in a shallow riverbed

of trickling salt, raise you a new home

in an arctic stalactite confessional.

Tag. You're out.

Wear liquid red

against the grey

and drain the storm

caught in the fray,

alleviate

our words' decay.

The tap is closed today.

023: Amphibians

In good hiding, sullen damp dwell,

in black paint behind glass, behind eyeballs,

in tender flesh, coiled 'round rugged bone,

'round spines of strangers I know well;

think you can tell the scalpel swirl

from a puncture wound in the sun's skin,

raped in stoke, reaped in smoke,

this man-made geology carousel

spins us all out of control, autonomy spilled on walls

cold, concrete fall like machine music.

Locked cobweb can-can in crumbling opium dens,

our obtuse, trussed livid bodies,

obscene eye peering through the lens of a noose,

as I know your name, you know mine,

yet we're caecilians to the play above,

beyond the reach of the Methuselah moth,

cellular lives in bardo, years in the clock's tick tock,

tongues will be mute before the echo,

the poison will dry before the ocean.

020: Merde de nom

You know my name, the one we share,

you did suspect a thread, osmium chain, weightless,

with the weight of fire bearing on my back.

Portraits bloomed in the bark of trees and dogs,

yours is housed within my bones,

within the burgeoning tendril rose.

But that which burns my fingertips chars my head,

I'd char my hand in the black box,

I'd choke them with the primeval astronaut cord.

Tribulations and plots against architecture,

devised in the hour of the minotaur,

seconds that time forgot, times infinity,

to the rhythm of temptations, to banish fibrillations,

bang the drums of war, bang the heads on walls.

All the ruminations, all the grime,

entwined 'round the spine, mirrored in obsidian.

And as I curse my face of glass on your marble flesh

the circuitry collapses without haste,

the letter of light slowly inverts to point the way,

all trudging mercenaries, ragged,

chasing desultory splinters of their lives,

while my scope was smudged,

they know my name, the one we share.

013: Strangers make the best confessors

Pack warm clothes, for cold winds blow outside.

Whence does this burning lash come,

this canyon eroded in eons of overcast days?

The beast whips remorselessly with utmost love,

chaotic crimson latticework drawn in moist teguments

forms patterns of collapse dragging lead appendages;

truth floats on alcohol, just as ghostships master the Sargasso Sea,

northwards, westwards, mere futile occasions to raise frail bars,

to restrain an angelic weather wake

and erect cornerless cubes of conceptual composite

from the crystallized discharge of primeval volcanoes.

Stone upon stone, arranged in obsessive perfection,

resins of damnation to topple ingrown ziggurats

of millenarian guilt, the care of wolfen mothers displayed,

a riddle of roads that lead from the absolution peak.

The outback forgot long ago the warmer neighbors of null,

a lonely light flashing from the lime hut

of a propaganda poster painter.