love

rolling images red and vital thump across my scalp and
then the harbinger comes swinging in to claim the tongue
and axle of the wagon as a sacrament when oxen stand all
about and I with dull-eyed buggery am trapped tripped
made opaque and left without my hornet's nest or my
shell

roiling tongues and smoking livers with their adolescence
still intact the trapeze of mortal quandary bouncing
unimportant to my scrutiny:
must it be so?

saunter and sunder your mind from all surrender, release
your chakra cosmic energy inner self soul eternal being
become a flash of light into the universe and swim
with me

e

Washed my soul within the river
Touched my tongue to nectar, honey
Found myself and walked on by

Tomorrow is the next horizon.

d

hope marches in my ear drum
and so I do not
despair

I knew you then

Spindling two half-broken
cardigans along the paved
walkways slouching on the
Rubicon: you were humming
hallelujahs

prophecy of the wilted gypsy

These visions curl against the smoke, clinging like a noose:

There came a time when Death rode in
upon his hoary steed

We struck our hands against the steel
begging to be freed

The casket swung, the gates, they crashed
As heaven's seven swords a-slashed

The dead and rotted realm of men
burned and burned and burned

The tourniquet against my flesh
turned and turned and turned

The ghastly mountains flickered white
Beheaded like a fallen knight

These visions burn against my throat,
Cut me,
Cut me loose!

b

dreaming underneath the unpainted sky
with fireflies and crickets and a beautiful
girl singing as she thrashes about because
she doesn't really know how to dance

tarantula nightmares under the grey dawn
where the children trade in their weapons
for cereal bowls and tell me that the fish
have suffocated under the pressure

I need this pharmaceutical need a fix-me-up
need my fix need to get fixed need fixing
need to fix everything that I've done wrong
don't know why she left but she was happy

there was this starlight just sitting there and
she took it and her bread bowl and told me
we were two were always undiscovered made
immutable and token taken took beneath

bridges over rivers smoothing out my madness
shifting as a pocket full of pills and my doctor
tells me it's not an emergency writing prescriptions
screaming in tongues like guitar notes together

harmonies unplucking themselves and fastening
their lilting abstinence into the graveyard
the smell is hungering for my acquiescence
the surrender. of all that makes me exceptional.

my oeuvre, my vibe, my energy, my je ne sais quois,
my spirit, my ambience, my diligence, my wisdom,
my essence, my oneness, my cosmic stratosphere,
my one-and-only-damn-you-if-you-don't-care soul

but I don't know what I did
I don't know what I did
I don't honestly know what I did
to end up here

a

Empty city
full of black holes
half-dreamt
on a sewer grate;

slap my knee
and shout
hey i'm home