Revelation(edited)

He said he saw heaven
when his eyes rolled in his head,
and that it was a spider’s web of light.
So crystalline the silken robes
that shiver like everything
is connected.

The black oil was so thick.
I couldn’t pull him out -
to stare down the sickly sun
that spins you green with
every waking day.

The coffin falls in the icy grave.
To be a pallbearer,
to bury the spider
is to know
the dirt is too honest a teacher
as it thumps and
it cracks,
and men listen,
half dazed,
half dead,
and shovel.

The Mind of a Painter

It comes from the centre.
It comes from the mirror;
the genes which hunt us now
are blades plowing the wheat fields
while above all savage eyes
is a meat factory of light.

It comes from the edges.
It comes from the night;
the memories which strangle us now
are knives cutting the flesh of a cow
while above all pitiful eyes
is a golden field of clouds.

The farmer does not know he is a butcher of ideas,
throwing away everything that
might madden him with failure.

The butcher, in his frigid back freezer,
flaying the day away with his metal teeth
does not know there is an art in the
skinning of an animal,
throwing away everything
until only flesh
and madness
remain.
He does not know his bloody easel
is a painting
of God.

And God's eyes know madness.

Artemis

Artemis

A rocket launcher fires
Helicopter miss-matched spins and falls
A Police station explodes.
She was watching the war.

I was watching the moon!
Full beast, breath high rising like a cold evaporating stone!
Who made her?
Who chiseled her face and sanded her pores?

The dreams of carpenters snorting legislation like crack?
The pointing spikes of marching idealism?
That she might be alone in her tranquility
a billion years
though the Earth may shake with a thousand nuclear clouds.
She stands watching!
Peaceful queen.
Mortified, eclipsing star.
Frowning, smiling, frigid, bound to
circle our follies and our sparkling crystalline obsidian,
our swashing careful seas

and she pulls! On the TV set
as though the stupidity offended her.
The rusty boat of the Earth heaves with her!
She pulls tighter against the shore!

The sound of her teeth
chatters,
Crumbles like chalk
on pavement
and she gurgles.
The moon shakes on the ocean!

Pale-beam
like eagle wings in the updraft
(Sand Dunes shiver smoke)
I whisper to the stars:

She's rising to the moon. She's rising to the moon.

Sans

Mouth opened wide,
she just wants a little more:
The blackness is too dark to scream.
All this time I shook the dice,
I learned the laws,
I cracked the hour glass
with a curious mind
for nothing.

She claws against the velvet window,
her starry sweat on my forehead;
the whore that is the universe.
“Just let us try it again...
Just let us try it once more.”

No one is going to tip the fucking glass
for us, to watch the sand move
upside right
or downside wrong
again.

Black holes will suck
the very last particle,
the very last dream
into the starving void
with hungry, drooling jaws,
and then turn on each other!
Nothing, not even emptiness
will breathe.