Transcendental Blues

Athena, why do you dress like that
You are no surly nun
The cloth befits a higher call
And you worship the sun
Your feet are sore and blistered
From your tattered tarot deck
Down across the train tracks
You find yourself in check
The King of Wands reminds you
Of your winsome ways
When damned into the nighttime
And hunted in your days
Please, Athena, hear me
And know that this is true:
I'm lost inside your highway mind
With Transcendental Blues

Oh, Helen, hear the freeway
And all the dainty cries
The children of her Paris
The taxi where love dies
But then, with Charon in stow
And with your rummage thrills
I don't expect salvation
Just some divine will
And as Paris is jaunting
He curls a fist at me
The ocean parts in wonder
My blood, it spots the sea
Helen, won't you listen
Or else I'll have to sue:
I'm lost without your open hand
In Transcendental Blues

The Capricorns are dreaming
Of you, my friend Marie
You must not be so angry
I thought you wanted me
Please don't scorn my trumpet
I thought you wanted more
I didn't know your number
Or your ancient lore
And as you touch my necklace
I see your husband cry
He knows you can't surrender
He knows I cannot lie
The dirt is shoveled sadly
If only I had you
But I'm stranded in Durango
With Transcendental Blues

I saw you, Angelina
With triumph waving high
Your mattress burned with nicotine
As twilight maimed your eye
Blood sits on your canine
Your teeth are filled and numb
I'd speak but when I'm near you
I soon go deaf and dumb
Your rings are circling sadness
Your ears are made for more
A certain flash of insight
Can peek behind your door
I appreciate your candor
You are among a few
Who know that I am strangled
By Transcendental Blues


Your fortress, see it burning now
Daisy, you know that
Your Tom Buchanan shall return
Wearing his new hat
With patience and with confidence
You told me of your dream
Where crows would fly in triangles
And you joined my team
But Tom won't have this dalliance
He knows your secret plan
I saw him kill the diplomat
An old and wiry man
But you I doubt would care much
If he wore another hue
Strapped across his deathbed
With Transcendental Blues

Can't mystery and misery
Befriend you, Miss Divulge?
You sit in judgment of your pawns
Piercing friendship hulls
Your head is crooked on this page
I think you've lost your nerve
You can't escape from yourself
In case you hadn't heard
But then your doctor boyfriend
And his many-colored pills
Would have you take a new cure
For your imagination ills
Creative as you may be
I can see through you
I'm glad for once that I am struck
By Transcendental Blues

Afghan

The world as you know it is spinning around
They murdered your mother, your father has drowned
Slip under your skin and the splinters shall see
That dead is your love for yourself and for me

Tabletop anguish and the march of the saints
The teachers walk backwards, the dreamer, she faints
Purloined percussion and the throbbing of swords
Sunken surprises for the stations of lords

Clap with both hands, scream with delight
Maybe tomorrow you won't have to fight
Scarlet is bursting in clouds in the air
Rattle and rumble in your silver chair

I knew the boy shepherd, I knew him well
The screaming red missiles took him to hell
Scarred and surrendered, smothered in gold
A flashing of fortune, an old-fashioned coat

Who can you blame for the dangers abroad?
How can you wonder why pirates maraud?
Do mortals have free will or is it just fate?
Must we distrust what is placed on our plate?

Moss on Birch

Mustangs are galloping, waterfalls of knees
Pages are ruffling, they dance in the breeze
An old shattered mirror, a symphony of glass
The hum of a bluesman on an old phonograph
A woman in heels with the eyes of a knife
Wearing a dress of dust and starlight
She opens a door that is swirling and cold
As a dozen dead winds breathe in her soul
Hickory is snapping underneath the weight
Of ten carved commandments on uneven slate

Skylarks and madmen are strange company
For rebels and renegades estranged from the sea
Tapestries of freedom and empty black pans
Are sizzling in harmony between the sun’s hands
Radios are crackling, and the ancients still sway
Beneath the miasma of death’s silver ray
Beads of longevity drip on the floorboards
Illuminated swordsmen duel on the shores
Thickets of thorns entrap the old hares
Iron vested angels corrupt heaven’s stairs

Lovers are twisting inside verdant ponds
Politicians bark as their dogs merely yawn
Vines and swamp gasses burn in the dawn
Ladders are lifted to damsels in bond
Umber-hued children discuss their escape
Autumn sits silent in summer’s embrace
Hunters recoil at the early grey dew
Fog veils the poet and gypsy from view
I sit on a tree stump, collecting white frost
In history, antiquity, and Avalon, I’m lost

The Weeping Sun of Absalom

In Gilead unfolding,
The wood of Ephraim boding,
The fields of David’s loathing,
In tattered royal clothing,
Sits Absalom, the general
Besmirched son of Israel

Golden and most handsome,
the kingdom’s brightest star

Poor Tamar! Poor Amnon!
Sweet Absalom, I know!
Poor Israel! Poor Judah!
G-d must hate thee so!

In Hebron, all-commencing,
The shadows ever-sensing
That you, now David’s oldest son
Should hold the throne, not Solomon
Sweet Absalom, the general
Begrudged son of Israel

The kingdom held for ransom,
by the golden son and star

O, Absalom! You sinner!
The tears of rebel wrath!
O, Absalom! You traitor!
The flush of ancient past!

In Gilead unfolding,
The river Jordan soaring,
The Valley of Jehoshaphat
Where Hushai, traitor, knelt and sat,
You spat upon Ahithophel
And thus, you rightly fell

As spears claim your noble heart,
Heaven weeps with golden stars

Talkin' In't Ain't You Wan't Somethin' Else Blues no. 10

Somebody punched a hole in the damn tambourine
Met another matron if you know what I mean
Breaking in the banners for the next world war
Had an aging woman call me a dirty whore
The pink of misogyny is bawling me out
I sink in my pocket where the coins have grout
My name is chanted all across the land
A soldier ran across me with his old wet hand
It’s a matter of honor,
It’s a matter of pride,
Coming out swinging with the stars and stripes

For William

I remember as a boy we grabbed our fishing poles
We went to some little lake next to a watering hole
The day was hot, the breeze rolled through
Flies danced above my head
We didn’t catch a single fish
I just caught a cold instead
But it was times like that I remember best
And I never shall forget

The black cat you called Joey is standing in your chair
He knows you’re never coming back, I don’t think he cares
He sits there crying constantly
I fear it wounds his heart
But he will sing his eulogy
Until he's torn apart
And it is times like this I will notice best
And I never shall forget

We sat inside the basement, arranging your old stamps
Beneath the porcelain glow of your many-shaded lamps
The book was nearly filled
With foreign calling cards
When I ceased to collect them
And telling you was hard
And it was times like that I remember best
And try not to regret

The dog, your vigilant guardian, has become so kind
It seems that he has chewed his paws and has gone half-blind
And as I dab his wounds
And soak away the silt
He seeks just my affection
He seeks to wash his guilt
And it is times like this I will notice best
And soothe his old regret

I sit inside your workshop with a madman glowing grin
The sawdust mixed with cobwebs and the triumph then with sin
I left the door half-open
And I knew the world was lost
The window panes are broken
The winter has no frost
And it is times like these I remember best
And I wish that they hurt less

The hill out back for sledding, what a joy that was
Crashing into trees as my sister and I rushed
Down the hill in fashion
On our uncle’s sled
And as we hurried inside
I remember you had said:
“Grandson, these times you'll remember best”
And I try not to forget

Oh, I remember picking up the sticks back beneath the trees
The only reason we had to do it was you couldn’t bend your knees
We grimaced and we groaned
As we trudged along the hill
We did a shoddy job
But you paid us even still
And it was times like these I remember best
And I hope you will forgive

I have one more confession that involved your morning run
I’d pass you on the bus and the kids would all make fun
Of what you wore each morning
And I wish I could go back
And tell them all how proud I was
Of the courage you never lacked
And it was times like those I remember best
And thus I must confess

But the fondest recollection that springs into my mind
Is when you grew a moustache and kept it for some time
Just because my sister asked you
When she saw the photograph
I saw the picture yesterday
And I couldn’t help but laugh
So I want you to know I remember best
How much we all were blessed

a quiet wavy saturnalia

Ostentatious ospreys, in sudden harmony
caw for martyrs to cast aside
their broken tombs and barren wombs
trumpets slashing kindness like a wrist

The curfew of petulance, having run its
nightly rounds, demanded that we sailors
returned to dockside sorrow, guardians
of lagoons, buzzing dragonflies in summer

Fisherman sought crumbs of decency, trusting
the sacred vows of saviors and drinking
poison promises as republics collapsed
disunited in the rhythm section

Scandal is known to the halls of chamber
maidens in their dead delights
waddling and making reprimands as 
carnations wilt on stove tops

The blank stares of paddling crusaders
white-washed in golden chains of slavery
promised to striped surrender, silver light
beaming through cracked stain glass window

Swinging madly, two girls, two lovers
reflections curling at their feet
breathe sweet perfume and levitate
conscious nothings lying in the breeze

Tungsten is the taste of morbid resignation
leaves overturned as staring splintered blacktop
exudes the gas of infectious righteousness
drivers bleeding their forgiveness

Benches, broken and mangled in the evening shower
time in its cruel magician manner
carnal in its every-grasping spiderisms
fangs of delight where death is born

Starlight licks the breast of the trespasser
her ear perforated by unlonely sermon
crawling as though remembering survival
panting, gasping its herald banner

Thawing bonds of perennial termination
set in agony against cork-screw type
patters in pi8thy patterns, impressing all
and leaving needles in their socks

Marvel, miracle in war machine irradiating
all the tumbling pedals, petals of lotus
marigold in screaming distant nightmare
spoken, sung by faithful transistor radio

Fidelity, dignity and introspective dalliance
child's gleeful proclamations at aviation
chasing the night into a burrow
laughing as only the innocent can

Scales and worn ruddy shoelace causes
hungering for reflection and conception
sparkle wearily on the waiting page
the pen shovels out their sunken joy

Smell the legacy of mortal wishfulness
equating fame with wintry legitimacy
sensitivity as fortunes unmend the triumph
causal winds of resolution barking

Thoughtful risibility and arisen crucifix
sprinkled with blood and pining for cure
test your apprehension with small bites
tearing in the quiet of creation

Catapult virility as crutches hanker past
touching vulnerable as smiles wander
trusting telepathy for preening perfection
lilacs blooming in the schizoid sprawl

Fighter jet howling in dead grey sky
white blood streaming trickle from tail
bystanders in coal black cheeriness
proceed and play without wince and worry

Bar

Clack-whirrrr-THACK! Balls rack 'em up
Wonder at the sizzle of cigarettes
DEATH RAT-RAT-RATTLE
Scintillating jukebox angel
Kings and regents yodeling
Broken bar stool grimy trucker breath
Mack by any other name
Ring, ring, answer fatality
Fatlism, instinct
The place stinks of sex

Ex Animo now available for sale!

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My second book is finished, and it looks absolutely splendid. I'm really happy with how this book turned out, and I feel as though it's a definitive and provocative follow-up to my previous book, Highways and Hierophants.

also known as Hello

Plagiarist amphetamine
half-spirit inundation
of loneliness in the
form of greeting

Mon Dieu

And so it was that Dante Page found himself alone within the blinding light that filtered through the prison bars of ruined romance, crestfallen and trapped in a city after the End of Days and left by God to oversee the ruinous singularity that had catapulted his misery to the point of missing Rapture, and he stood and knew Aurora had left, but not that he had Known her, for she had in her final clandestine days been cruel and unwise and swallowed whole the incapability of mindful expansion or the resuscitated need for individuality and self-expression that can, in all the words of the Divine and in the scripts of the ancients and left humming and rumbling on the tongues of the wisest priests, the children of the stars and the happy prophets who fill the sky with meaning, yes this and this only can be described in a single word that glows and coalesces and burns with fervor in the hearts of those who refuse to be snuffed and allow the soft glow of candlelight not to confuse them from knowing the meaning of the sun, solar wonder and the vast truth of reality and the stations of the cross and all the relevant elevation that takes and wraps the mind into supreme consciousness: magic

Corruption of the spirit is the most grievous crime to which Aurora had been convicted, but her smoking tongue and lashing bouts of closing, that is the act of emptying the mind of sinfulness and filling it with books and pages and quotes and references to build a paper fortress and claim faith and longevity and embrace of the one realest truth to the exclusion of rhythm-truth that rattles in the ears of every soul that is in tune with the frequency of life, screaming and kicking and dancing naked on the streets as it is known to be, brick-layered grime covering the faces of children who Know that infinity is a concept and concepts are limiting and to memorize one's life is to unlive it and kill yourself in ritual suicide more hateful to the well-being of one's spirit than the destruction of one's life-wish, the acolytes and parsons and the abbots all hold a hymn of hallelujahs to the undying and unspoken creed that can only come after their uttered counterparts die in echo, underneath when all vibrations have rendered themselves empty, proven their unworthiness and the need for further expression and attainability and precious visions born from fleeting images that connect the mind to Sophia and her waiting grasp as God's only messenger in the instances when Void and uneternal paradox demons can no longer claw at what you have known and are pierced with searing spears of Knowledge which the Creator so knowingly put into Eden with secret omniscient all-Knowledge that serpents and Dean Skeller could pry the truth from the human condition and necessitate his untimely expulsion

So consider then the sin of man, which is not to be curious but to be led by woman, as Genesis would tell us, to great acts of unwisdom, to scorn the hand of Sophia, but this, as the serpent would have us to believe, is because of woman's own weakness to the call of corruption and that the entire adolescence of the human spirit required morals and guidance, but the tongues and fruits and trees are all inverted and the messages are corrupted by immortal anti-understanding that now prevents Aurora from grasping the Knowledge that Sophia provided her, and thus prevent her from elevating Dante to the quaver of her eternity, as the two souls become cast in gold and feel the calves and idols begin to melt and know and Know and un-Know that if they come untangled, they will succumb to the Biblical narrative and find themselves cast in roles not meant for them or for any who Believe, for their belief is now a venom that is poisoning salvation and demands tribute instead of elevation

I do not Believe, I look into the Void and see Cameron's smirking chaos and I hear madness screaming at the New Orleans floodgates and know that anything that I do and anything that I say cannot unmake the faults and earthquake nightmares that plague the immortal spirit of Dante and I begin to cry, not tears of salt or tongues of flame but for the Holy Spirit, for ghosts and gods and everything that never was and could never be for that is the only iron link that has not rusted in this accumulating belt of madness and Mars and war and death and sadness that will tear life asunder if permitted to grow in its storm cloud way

Les frères

"Tell me about Delilah."

It was the first time Dean Skeller had dared to utter her name, his two pensive eyes groaning for resolution and the exploration of Truth and all its bounties, and so, recalling the half-smirk absurdity of Cameron and mustering my best mask of unhurt and ambivalence, I cradled the surly glass of rum and pondered

"She was a love," I said, growling each word, punctuating with swigs of cold anxiety and a shot of self-realization, "a vulgar little love that died as all shallow things must do. Flowers on a tomb, a fading comet, a brilliant bursting lightbulb, death and all its splendor, Delilah was life, she was everything, she was nothing, she was the Void, she was not Sophia and for that I both hated her and loved her, for to love is to hate and confine and need and cling and unfulfill and regard, rather than redefine"

He pressed a glass against those spinning grey eyes, steel in the face of stainless obscenity, mindfulness in the mindless humming of asinine guitar, strumming infinity and purchasing rounds of abstinence for all the sane and sober minds seeking completion in a midnight dreary dalliance, and then Dean said, "So you never knew her, and instead of exploring her, sharing your nova madness that you continually huff about, you abandoned her on a city block and left her with a rainy glass of teardrop sadness?"

I sunk in shame, recounting on my mental abacus the crimes committed against Delilah and against myself, and knew that in his goldminer way Dean sought to purge me of my sins, directing me to wisdom and peeling away my pavement self delusion, and so I pondered and slithered and considered the power of the Fates and all the impossibility of romance and the shocking truth of the capitalist notions of investment that plagued the hearts of lovers and the poorly minded, and I knew then what I must say. "I never knew her and never opened my sanctum heartbreak to her because I needed her to feel secure, she was empty and I tried to fill her with my knowledge, I tried to burn necessity into her consciousness and elevate her to a throne, a divine seat of will and thought and prowess fortune coronation regality elegance profession. . ."

He snickered, the way that Lucifer must have snickered, that knowing deception that had led to the Truth, the waiting serpent fangs that promised good and evil, that defined the Paradise that only through ignorance and the blind acceptance of God's word could man retain his immortal spirit and remained saved and unsullied by the flames of sin that burden every waking soul and demand for salvation through the intervention of flesh and immortal christening, he snickered as such and said, "I think you wanted to see yourself within her, turn her and polish her into a mirror, and when she wouldn't taste of your cigarette, when she wouldn't smell of your sweat, when she would not think of your volition and wake at your demand, I think you realized that you are a martinet, you want a puppet, you need formless uncreation rather than a sculpted wonder"

"Perhaps," I lit a dreary half-cigarette and smoldered with anxiety, knowing that I had been branded with unfortunate half-truth and would have to use a sieve to sort knowledge from the grit and sand that stuck to my subconscious like black tar, and I smoked and listened to myself and the rhythms of the night and the sound of glasses clinking against an open bar and wondered if I had not gone completely mad for and from Delilah all those months ago

Joie de vivre

The night began with half-note arrangements, dusty boots slamming the accelerator as a cloud of history and corruption blew into the wind behind me. I, Louis Delacroix, was on a wild-eyed journey in the way only the French can be; a canopy above my head and a brown ruddy road quaking beneath my greedy tire. Frenzied, I brushed my hair aside as I held my phone close, shouting in ecstatic acquiescence as the voice, dearest Cameron, friend of the House of West, scurried in his shuttered half-squealed way, his HA-RA-RUMPHING and mad hatter sermons cutting through the dreary rain of an uncommonly cold summer afternoon

I arrived at Cameron West's temporary home, the residence of an ex-girlfriend whose soul ruptured after their sporadic bouts of romance came to a grinding halt. A wide-grinned Cameron returned with surrender in his eyes and a warrant stitched into his soul, but we renegades, raconteurs of the forgotten questions of eternal happiness, climbed into my jalopy and crashed along the open dusty back road, the kind that has a number for a name

Two thousand years of tyranny flooded the veins of Cameron, but he held a cheery form of pandemonium in his pocketbook, whooping out into the uncaring dead day, where the sun refused to be uncontained by its curly blankets of iron admonition. But we persisted, pressing into the mad storm clouds as though they were salvation, as though we could hold them to ourselves and coo to them in the night, the sort of unremarkable infatuation that men and boys are so frequently infected with. But I did not lust for carnal emptiness, I wanted the sky to crack and the wisdom of Sophia to embrace me, as I would melt inside of her with fervor and completion

We stopped into a bookstore, a dingy old place with knowledge stacked in hundreds of rows, happy little books cascading along each other, jutting and demanding a new home. This orphanage was closing soon, screaming babes crying out for help, and Cameron laughed in his half-mad way as he trudged along, picking and slicing three books from ancient-looking shelves. I could not see his wildly shifting collection, jabbing at a shelf as he plucked a book, smirked and mumbled three words from it, then buried it among the other forgotten treasures others had passed along. I pored and searched and believed in Heaven at that moment, needing to feel alive and feeling a sudden shock along my spine as I wondered, could this be my one true love? could this book enlighten my soul, enrapture me to higher callings? And breathless, I stumbled into the poet's corner, snatching with greed Ginsberg, Whitman, Frost, and others, too many to count, too many to care. Enthrallment, encapsulating my soul, eternally bound within a hardback cover

We made a pact to gather the other members of our band, trudging along the black asphalt hopefulness of the city so that we could knock upon the window of Dante Page. We climbed along the sideways half-warped deck behind his house, and when certain that there was no need for privacy or indecency, we rapped along his window, as we were accustomed to doing. Mere moments passed before Dante, with open arms and that look of confirmation that dwells within the hearts of the righteous and courageous, took us into his home, greeting us as though we were soldiers returning from some forgotten, ancient war. He exchanged words with Aurora, the warm-hearted exuberance that filled his steely blue eyes with the conviction that compels his every atom into the assured grasp of knowing salvation, and the plan was set into motion

We climbed into the jalopy again as both Cameron and Dante made calls, simultaneous summons issued to our other companions, to complete our hysterical fraternal rite. Arranging to meet at a sterling bar of ultimate and unconquerable tranquility, we found our respite as we crawled through the swinging-swaying doors, an infectious brilliance in our souls and the trumpets of Dante's thousand choirs of angels thundering behind us, reminding the world of the divinity found in fellowship and piety

The next to arrive, swiveling in a begrudgingly conciliatory way, was Dean Skeller, the goggled two-eyed captain of knowledge who exudes the sense and mindfulness that encircles us in a ring of indigo, transforming our humble society and elevating us to reach Sophia's waiting hand. Dean was nearly silent, attesting only in glimpses of confession that his soul was, like all mortals, wounded by the clawing demons that condemn us to a life of pain, but all the same he celebrated life with us, embracing Sophia's reminder that to be alive was to be supreme

We began to speak of women, with Dean in his quiet manner reminding us that we should all be thankful for our past, his own conspired and muddled in the tasteless spirals that left him in a humbled and hat-tipping mood. Cameron then spoke in disjointed, many-minded way, grasping at a hundred thoughts and spraying them, a machine gun of a million bits of cosmic fluorescence sparkling along the dim rivets of the somber table we seized and painted in our vibrant way

"Tomorrow never sees me as I saw myself in yesterday's clothes," he said with a hoot and a slap on the table, humming three notes of a song that waivered into our conversation like a crow that perches on an open windowsill. "From here on out, my God, we're all together, we're in this place, tonight is our night to seize Life and remind her that we can feel, that we are here, that everything and everyone is just another marker on our unmapped road trip across her open thighs," he laughed again and hooted and hollered as drinks were set before us, smiling slyly at the young waitress, who winked and carried on with her duties, melting into the darkness of the bar again

"I don't believe in love," said I, already feeling the first of several drinks course through my veins, faint as I was in the hours we had journeyed out. "It's a vulgar word," I explained to confused stares, "I can't be a part of it, it makes a pure intention seem like some dirty, normal convenience, an expression or phrase that everyone steals and paints on their door, six billion red doors all the same, I want more than a red door, a simple cage to put myself in, a single dream to pursue"

"Has he been drinking already?" crooned Corey Madden, the cherub-faced angel who won the admiration of all the women he happened by, though he connected with another soul, wrapping his angelic wings around her, the two of them inseparable in that newfound joyous way of lovers. "Give me what he's having," he laughed, and Cameron whooped and clapped him on the back, beaming at the completion of our covenant

"No, no, let me explain," I said, smirking with resignation as my fellows clapped and chortled. "I seek something unexplainable, something beyond words, like... I want to find a woman for whom I could pry the stars like jewels, give them to her, and be unafraid of the wraiths of galaxies or the Keeper of the Stars and all the repercussions for such an act of pure and complete gesture of gratitude... I wish for someone for whom I could sew together a million words of adoration, all in earnest dedication, and still feel unconvinced that I had said enough of her glory and her awesome, soaring notes that resonate within the fabric of my very being, rippling and waving through me as I stood with complete adoration of her temporal, cosmic, and eternal form, leathery and incorruptible, mortal and immortal, as enamored with life as all of us, a raison d'être, a refuge for renegades, a home for beggars, a warm wisdom I can enter and erupt with joy and comfort and surrender--"

"Sounds like you're talking about getting laid," Cameron howled, earning the laughter and admiration of us all, for we envied Cameron for his free spirit and his ever-growing grin and especially for his frenzied swath of emotion, that maelstrom, that symphony of enclosure, a complete yet sprawling image of himself that spilled into the lives of others, inviting us to exist in the private world where everyone was damned and yet they wore unpainted smiles

My God, the night, in its half-bound glory, bleeding into the moonlight, with chaos and angels and all the grimace that comes with too much to drink and the brilliant white-hot light of purest joy that infected every soul we came across, even as our numbers began to dwindle; first Dante, who revered the dawn and God's promises and held his oaths to be sacrosanct, walking into his home in a half-drunk state that we comforted, talking him out of further madness and knowing that when he promised to stay home and never drive, he would uphold his word, for his word was law and Dante was incapable of breaking testament or Law, and then when bespectacled Dean Skeller screamed in his silent way into the night, sober as he was known to be and without the dreams of canopies and mad-god star thievery that plagued my aching soul, and then when Corey was driven around the town in hopes of clearing his mind, finally coming to his senses around some neon sign begging for a gambler and a jack of hearts, yes it was then that we took Corey back into his truck, whooping and cavorting in the way that the dwindling armies do when their numbers vanish in the frenetic moments of pitched battle

Cameron and I slid into a gleaming red and black club where women debase themselves, sitting in the back and discussing his mad ways and impossible plans as though recalled from some fallen civilization, a dream that broke into a million pieces after being clawed and mauled by inanimate Siberian tigers, until we were expelled from this Hellish reminder of the lowest needs of mortal flesh for refusing to even buy two drinks, which was required in lieu of paying cover, but I wished to keep my senses and what remained of my wallet so we hurried back to the House where Cameron West now dwelled, and we said our cheery goodbyes

And as I droned through orange construction cones and peered at the nearly full countenance of the lunar avatar of what is surely Sophia's most blessed form, one miraculous thought burned and trembled in my ears and crashed through my veins:

"Yes, life is truly splendid in all its searing glory"

obviate

You could fit her world
into a petri dish
annotated hubris
a pair of red boots

I could taste equations
tranquil heresy
apocalyptic hunger
a flooded river delta

Sun-soaked, eradicate the danger
running grooves in harmony
skipping pops of record high
assuaging guilty grave robbers

Dental miscommunication burgeons
hankering on the quasar
touching dimes to damsels
sudden sparks of serenity

The Wedding

Little by little, as ants sneak into the premature breeze,
twenty of my closest friends stand as though
complete strangers, trading tales of currency
hapless, helping their abject egos to pretend
this strange fog does not wound their soul

The wedding, with delicacy and tattered bliss swaying,
planned with amnesty and in the daylight
a conspiracy to ratify celestial bonds
two souls prematurely stitched in union
convinced of the eternity of love

Charming, as the bride and her cheery golden face
swim like sand through crashing crystal ocean
sinkholes of sympathy into which ambience
and motorized humility are projected, pried
amplified by smog-induced hysteria varnish

Reality churns in my ears as I am directed forward
suited in the armaments of formality
dripping with emaciated mulishness
anxiety and social anticipation parading
in neat lines along the open white square

Banners and bouquets, arranged in pleasing fashion
magnolias and chrysanthemums and roses
assorted in shape and color with calculation
a wedding planner must engage in tyranny
to pull off such propaganda with efficiency

A marriage is a promise made in anxious allocution
its covenant entered with uniform amiability
and, whose failure is attested in courtrooms
in broken highway unhappiness left crying
children torn into pieces by hate and spite

But with a passing hand and dawning dreariness
ringlets crooning at my eyelids, bare
and tinkering with a ballroom morality
I sit in reflection of open cerulean blood
the ozone everything breathes sweetly

Caramel honor and the sweet afternoon commences
much investment is interpolated in harmony
notes of ecstasy waft upon the grass and trees
insidious smiles of pure intention curl and flash
and photograph hunger is sated with rapport

Bride, entourage, and fanfare with gap-toothed absolution
held close in hushed proclamations of the day
melting into cyanide facetiousness in piteous
rebellion to the commands of apparitions
handiness in the half-mad ferocity of future

The groom, no hint of gloomy predestination or prayer
stands admirably in dress uniform preparation
as always expecting rain or war on barricades
and as the barracudas circle around him
he merely tips his quarantine hat with humor

Fidgeting with brass and abolitionist languor
lying lurid in the fields of Elysium
torpor and tepidity filling viscous souls
temerity rising in crescendo naivety
limpid in its own impressionable way

Navigating Phlegethon with pallid sanctimony
in tears from temporal discharge and
clutching perdition in telling manner
establishment swallows these two
expatriated by orphic prophecy

Appropriated by corruptive nascent hallelujah
expressed in token jubilation remarking
collars of acceptance, crowned in alacrity
supernova swindlers with soaring chaos
giddiness bursting in my daydream soul

The Cosmic Carnival

Now, the world is unkind
To the children of storms
When demons have haloes
And angels have horns
I know you can't see me
I know you can't hear
The organ is playing
A song of good cheer
A dirge for the daylight
A dream of the night
They scream for my head, dear
They never shall fight
For causes they know of
For children or friends
The means of destruction
Justify their own ends
The carousel's spinning
The devil has come
The carnival is here
A song has begun

The monkeys dance and play with matchsticks
Breathing fire on your coat
They're dressed in clothing meant for business
Strangling every single note
Careening freely on the third ring
You begin to feel disturbed
Their leader turns and builds a grave stone
Beneath which you are interred

Haven't you heard of the danger of miming
The goals of the clowns who are smiling for you
Haven't you heard of the anger and timing
Required for being the fool just for you
A woman is standing as daggers are swimming
Across the thin air and are cutting her blouse
They stand within this, the rings of perdition
And claim not the company of Gabriel's house

Shadows part and mate again
Copulating in their sin
You know you cannot peer within
The spotlight of the conjoined twin
The air begins to reek with dust
You feel as though you always must
Keep your eyes in hopes of lust
Abusing their unholy trust

Elephants come marching in and take the outer-inner-ring
Medicine and innocence is not within their tusks or ears
Ivory and amnesty are all that these majestic beasts
Seek in silence and in trumpets, now they are so very near
Something happened to the future of these mighty animals
As the water fills their trunks you hear a sound so very clear
The killing angel made of blood taken from a lamb and dove
Has arrived to claim their lives as pain begins to climb and sear

Oh, the ringleader comes into center circle
Touching his face to his bony staff
He cares not if you're trapped within
As long as he can steal your laugh
His face is red and his eyes are black
He swears vengeance on God above
He may not be the Devil himself
But surely he can feel no love

The mighty and fearsome
Tamer of beasts
Is whipping the lion
Bleeding his feet
He handles a chair of
Mahogany
Entranced and ensnared in
Misogyny

Acrobats who spring about the wire from the sky
Are staring down into the crowd with utmost disdain
Asking facts and missing tact they shall never die
Their breath is made for all to see and will always sustain
As chalk made from the bones of sinners and of kings
Is clapped into a deadly cloud of fortune and of woe
Their brother falls onto the floor, suspended by a string
They are puppets dangling from the pits that hang below

And as the crowd begins to cheer
You soon realize
You're all alone within your chair
Panic in your eyes
The Carnival shall carry on
Never to desist
Welcome to the gates of Hell!
Please do not resist.