As the day grows thin

I awake from her loud snoring,
The sun blooms on the horizon.
Fog clings close to my closed window
And the sea calls to my eyelids.
Dew is sliding on my doorstep
As the daylight breaks on prisms.
She yawns sweetly to a songbird
And I mourn my broken prison.
Smoke is pouring through the kitchen
From the oven to the table.
My lover's eyes shine gently
Behind locks of flint and sable.

What if Jesus carried his cross
Across mountains to the valley
Where the lepers are the princes
Of the gutters and the alleys?
There they rule their mighty kingdom
From their thrones of ash and cinder
And their rags are robes long tattered
From a thousand long Decembers.
Could he ever cure their sadness
With the eyes that God once gave him?
Would he cry in perfect silence
Knowing none could ever save them?

So I close my empty Bible
And I wash my hands with water.
The floral patterns swirl from the
Wind that blows upon the harbor.
I then fold my palms together
As the train howls like a phantom.
A man peers from hidden mirrors
In the garden of his mansion.
The snow melts slowly on his cheeks
While he lights his ancient sorrow.
He still dreams of days long vanished
And the promise of tomorrow.

But as he climbs into his tomb
The dusk crawls in through my chimney.
She will never be my true love
But she is so warm beside me.
My bed knows no other lover;
I am faithful to my demons.
She brings only darkness with her
But she listens to my grievance.
So I lay below the altar
Where the sacrifice is offered
And I know she will unbind me
From the sins that I have suffered.

Tactical

Is it strange
being at the bottom
of a century of
lies?

When you can sit
in your asylum
and count the
steps?

Is it strange
to be alone
for all your
life?

When I can sit
behind the glass
and watch your
steps?

Louise

Draped across a sofa
her hands were knitting,
she lay in errant exile
the madam of gold-bricked streets


Parisian eyes,
a bleeding chamber,
precision in pretense;
she did a lot of LSD

Strange,
white-gloved,
estranged from morning
a ray of light bursting backward from her prism

The canvas folded
and fluttered to
the ground,
torn


She was not a pimp,
she was a jester

What has she become?
A stranger to herself as
the lyric of the dawn
shrinks against her
ego!

What has she become?
A temptress whose throat is
as raw as when she
fed on my
remains

What has she become?
A godless goddess with
a broken temple in
the Garden of
Babylon

What has she become?
A dissident who paints herself
with blush, blue mascara on
her blank face, forever the
patriot

What has she become?
What she always was.
Nothing.

cry

You made love upon the stair
You built an altar from your flesh
Playing his madness
Like a harp

You took a throne from innocence
You steal the power of the night
Warring with sorrow
Like a knife

you only want
What you can't have

j'accuse

Diamonds are your answer
For a century of pain?
Lost,
Lost,
Are we lost?

Kicking pebbles along the creek; gravel aches

Punch the dial
swing, sing sweetly
touch me with your
brilliant light

Put me on your pedestal
drag me through your riverbed

Rhythm answers
questions raised
because of our
disharmony

Demeter paws at wicker flesh

She rattles chains
she cannot burst;
she cannot unfasten
her love.

She straddles him
into the night;
he cannot unfasten
her mind.

The saffron burns
and drifts about;
it clings to her bosom
and curls.

Their passion burns
and melts in waves;
like magic or mayhem
or myrrh.

The called me a radical hung me by a noose upside in the city garden

Feels like the space age
feels like a mirror.
Screaming like a razor blade
singing with her fingers.

Pour,
pour,
pour,
pour
your
eyes for
Marianne.

shields

There's a crooked back alley where the sun can't reach and your head don't look past the rotten Georgia peach when you take yourself to Vegas just to put up a hand and you drive out to Seattle in a U-Haul van I wish you the best and may God Rest the Soul of that god-damned dog and the Pope and his clothes

String-faced nobody with a bottle of rum talking out his earlobes just to see who will come takes a hand of black glitter to sprinkle on his grave letting everyone see that he's just another slave can't see for the wishes of the surrogate mass and can't wish for the sea of the arrogant ass look down to London and you'll get a feel for another old mother on a carbon reel

The soldiers cast lots for a pile of clothes as the sun goes down over the bars of death row say could you spare me a mention of time as the Roosevelt family takes the last of my dimes the shields are being lowered for the misses and sirs but everything about this is growing absurd please take the book and just bury it away because there's no more room and nothing left to say