crucifixion

shaded, the forest speaks in violin
between the vines, the saviour's sins
have rotted into the bark of a pine.
cold climates for colder fingers,
tracing the lines between an empty collar bone,
a sole pocketed coin,
left now with nothing but the needled air
and the phantom of hair they might have tangled.
nothing but a little stain of blood.

C4 (a song in my head)

Can't you see, that I am sleeping?
That every soul here has a dream they need to share?
The craven maniac, the tired teacher,
the wrinkled secretary too, they are all a piece of you.

Can't you see, that we are dreaming?
That the swarm of wanton eyes in a crowd of swiftnening dyes,
oh how they're swirling, shirts and hair,
their loops of screaming mass are only dense disperse gas.
Oh how we move, oh how we hate,
oh how the physics of the ground and the touch of all the sounds
it makes us terrified, it makes us dumb,
makes us lose our silly gestures to our voices as they drum,
and the crying man beside is just a flesh-sack to outrun.

Cant you see, that we are comatose?
That our souls have met the mind and it's still busy counting time?
Dust and fire, limbs and scrapes,
for all the movement in the street there is still so little heat.
Rubbled hearts, and broken feet,
and dimming in the night the fire seems complete,
but the ashes rise, the fear consumes,
and human kind resumes the lie as shadow souls they seize the loom.
Can't you see, that I am sleeping?
That every soul here has a dream they need to share?

Pheonix Down

lord, let us wake again with lofty plans,
they sink with the long stride,
the catapult mind, too eager for reward,
is slack jawed and blind with the ride
in the mental ward.

Give it to me

The dead men dream but the keen men sleep.
The quiet woman pulls the cotton from the deep.
The deep is the reason why the green sea moves,
with the spinning of the people and the earth that it soothes.

The dead men dream but the poets consume.
The woman takes a break and stares at the moon.
The moon is the reason why the black sea turns,
with the eating of the shore and the mind that it burns.

The dead men dream but the mad men drive.
The woman pulls a muscle and does another dive.
The dive is the reason why the rough sea sings
with the swimming of a couple and their broken wings.

I will find you,
and somewhere down there the density
of words will crush us.

Separate II

In the deep sea the fish gather, blind but hungry.
In the trees the deep black green of the pines cries out
"pine for me", and a billion ants work obliviously under the stones.

In the cave the bats sing nursery rhymes
as they devour shrews and the words go
"sleep on through the night" as if to quell the hunger
of the lesser animals.

In the earth the worms spit through the soil,
aimless and divine direction until the sparrow swoops
and ascends into the sky in a cry
of "there is longing here" but the worms are warm for only a while.

The sun would smile but it is spitefully dense with the sea.
They would think it pretty,
but the apes are wrapped in their own dream.

Separate

To write, to shake the scenery of our mighty ghosts,
they shake us breathing,
they shape us seathing with the sap of the empty soul.
That easy dawn of thought the morning is not ours,
but the ten thousand birds singing in the tree
as they suckle on our souls.

The sea slips about our necks even as it glistens
in the second descent of the sun.
The trees, like toxic needles swift the smells that tackle us into the mud.
The mud, dense with the sound of the mad men,
making the tense more tense,
masking the fear in the old man's hospital bed.

These are the leaden dreams of the moving mud.
When our phantom begs us to dissolve
we whisper to it, no, not yet, we're not ready for you
as if it moved our ghosts to let us breathe.

a life of leisure

the synapse is dead.
though it shined like perfect dust,
the old man is dumb

For You, Ellen

I fell in love with a girl made of tin foil and sound.
In the sand of the shadows my dry mouth rises
off the four walls:
Oh broken down celestial temple that is the tin foil sky
guide me to the flesh of love,
I am sick of the skeleton of it.
Guide me to the body of love,
I am tired of the outline of it,
grinning wet and blue
I fell in love with tin foil,
the way your skin tasted in the temple.

In the sand of shadows there is nothing inside of you.
I have conquered you
and even your stars are empty clones -
burning and shuffling, burning and shuffling.

Scale

Bubbles of galaxies swirl against the black.
The viscous brain is violent and
cannot be opposed by mere pacifism and intellect
says the cosmos, exploding and bubbling,
crushing the expanse with its supercluster thumbs.

The father slaps him, grabs the book from his hand
and tears it in half.
Goddamn useless. Goddamn useless.
The rough man chops the wood
and the soft, younger man watches him intensely.

In the afternoon he picks berries in the woods,
spots a wounded bird in the brush
and crushes its neck with his thumb.

How beautiful. How beautiful,
says the cosmos.

Overgrowth

Because this is what came out of the earth when she died,
this is what came out of the earth.
Two stupid apes clinging together in the snow
three dumb birds clawing at the snails down below
four dead species for every dead man
five snakes in moonlight hiding in the sand
six armed babies crying at the zoo
seven laughing captains saying god will meet you soon
eight cruise missiles launch and screech
nine ants carrying an egg on the beach
ten cities wasted, ten more in the breach
of morning, and the sun comes hurling 'round again -
This is what came out of the earth when she died,
this is what came out of the earth.

untitled

You touch me and my brain breaks.
What am I but the cogs of star fusion
crying to be held by other cogs.
In the greasy morning the metals move and
I machinate with the slush and the lights and the fog
spinning still from you, fondling my cock,
telling me our molecules were meant to collide.

Tonight the madness of mechanics will return to me
When I slip into you and light the void of space
with a furnace of slime.
I will shrug off this eager awkwardness and
Shift back into clockwork cogs of counting time
till you rescue me again with another face.

Euthanasia

The beginning is a rat's nest:
all slime and heavy oxygen.

The middle is a furious cloud of smokey hurricane,
twisting and twisting the air
over oceans dreaming of touching her hair,
moon blazing, bars blaring,
mind spinning.

The end: a dimming campfire of feigned faces
and noisy nurses who ignore the puss from your mouth,
gossip, gossip, a nuke goes off
and still there are two women swapping bickered lines -
wake up and smell the pine sol,
your fake grass is gone.
You crawl to the nursery and cry
with the monsters behind the glass.
They find you and carry you back to the tomb
all white and hallow echo.

shadow of the blinds

these days are long and mechanical. I have seen no visions of cunt or cum in the hazy poetry of times such that muse is but a word personified into a whore bating me "come come take on my STDS and I will swallow you forever never holding me" in the shadow of the blinds there is a man without a mind singing "this is the iron mine and this your hatchet and saw, this is the iron mine and this is your hatchet and..." fury from the windows in mandarin as i drift sleepily, hurling my hatchet at the base of the skull - "why are you violently moving?" says the mindless one in the shadows of the blinds, and the base moves, forgetting the ashy ceremonies of day and soothed though knowing some deceit is under the harvest moon.

Carry Me

Carry me to the pillar of bones.
Singing, carry me singing while they prepare the wood
smiling, let us worship the drought, starving,
singing for the wet flesh as you carry me to the bones.
Carry me singing of the trees, of orbs of light,
of space and sky where the silk web of hands is infinitely singing
of the slippery procession, carry me my mother of bones
where the gravity escapes the eager notes of the mind,
starving for more time, stomachs starving,
carry me, laughing and screaming at the blaze
so we can see them all, strings shivering,
stomachs smelling for the rain:
Carry me to the pillar of bones.

In Their Orbits

Water Street, rocky street. Old and decrepit. Smelling of shit and salt and atheism. But I get to thinking. I am a rock. We are all rocks, orbits already set. We are standing in them, mucking about with our eyes stuck in them like tar, stoned faces melting into the pavement, lights blurring into their metal poles, water running in the rusty grates, dirty shit hole, calloused cunt trap of a crumbling sidewalk. And there he was sitting on the cardboard. I sit beside him, smelling the piss from his clothes.

“Have a drink” he says.
“I can’t. It will wear me down. I can’t.”
“I am God. You will drink from the tree of life and still be empty. I make water come from the stone”
I drink.

Ice And Nothing

Scratching and rolling,
like metal against wood,
white against fiberglass, screeching,
lifting us up like a bird with a broken wing...
Seven days now and not one seal.
The boat is gonna roll
but Bill won’t get out on the pans,
as if he could do something to save her.

In the bunk the sounds are muffled
into a bear cry,
itching from every side, above and below,
scraping the thin sheet of wood and glass
between us and the cold roar-
the sleep façade goes on.

Bill coughs while the boat cracks
and we’re pretending not to notice the way she tips,
the sound of the water rushing in below us,
hiding our eyes and lockin’ on to nothin’
like stunned idiots.

In the dark I crawl to the deck
and stare out at the black and white -
holding us so close you could touch it.
Ice and Nothing.
I touch it when they aren’t looking.

Ice and Rock

I was born on an island of rocks,
some jutting out of the sea,
some emerging from a bed of purple flowers
on the edge of a rocky cove.

I was born on an island of rocks,
some jagged and joking like jackals
in the early morning frost
as they trudged off to the ice to skin seals
in their most ragged clothes,
returning in the soft air with candy for the young
and blood soaking into their skin.

I was born on an island of rocks,
some rough like women with calloused hands
mending the flakes, laughing at the melting snow
while their children jump the ice pans,
proving their worth to each other,
returning in the chilly air ringing their clothes
to eat under the light of a kerosene lamp.

I was born,
kicking and screaming,
on an island of rocks,
where the ice flows fill the sea.

Mereological Nihilism

Eyes swirl up from the dust
and watch it sparkle in the emptiness.

Heads rise still black from the plastic veil
and push into the noise of:
traffic moving,
girls gossiping on the sidewalk,
of gulls saying ‘life, life, life!’
descending over the dirty street lamp,
and all around the music is playing,
factories humming fog, cars beeping, sirens, bottles raised,
heads alight with alcohol,
ears afire with jazz in a salted glaze,
minds driven by eager madness -
even in the silent spaces fires are teaming
white dwarves sucked into a giant star blasting light
into the windows where babies suck in the world
growing and growing
in mind,
in madness,
in natural and unrecorded rhyme
pushed by the wind of thought
the dwarf circles the giant,
lets loose the fury of parts and time
while a single gulls drops
for the last sign of food as the sun goes down
shrieking ‘rise, rise, rise!’
and the universal eyes listen
in undifferentiated awe.

Children Playing on Peyton's Wharf

How can you dance in such shadows
when the sounds of the dock are like screaming widows
who sit up all night staring at distant lights outside the harbour?


We are the children of the street light,
Who hear of foggy histories,
and know no other God
but He who strips us bare and blinking.

We are the children of empty wharves
swarmed only by the laughter of seagulls,
voices playing obliviously
to the creak, creak, creak of the crumbling wood.

We are the storm that finally rips
our Grandfathers from their graves
into the salt and wet -
the stages so much a part of them,
so little of us.

Weather

No, no, you cannot go,
when the engines of our dreams go down the crumbling highways of experience,
No, no, you cannot ride
in that coughing engine of sound while the reaper does his rounds singing
tide, tide, tide,
and all the histories of our buildings humming
boum, boum, boum,
and the ancient drum of lore rings in the ears of a boy who fights a war we have imagined in our minds and all he thinks of is the
tide, tide, tide,
washing on a distant shore in California.

So let us hide in the morning fury as our faces thaw.