Surreal Discipline

When you observe
potential becomes.  Before
you see it all things jabberwocky
a state of good and evil.  You must
become a stranger to yourself, this world
to seize it. 

Wax Birds

Something about you flying through
a fire of dream, your complexity
Icarus and the wing gliding
then glowing then silent.

In a sky where connecting, unless
you forget or fall away, a type of duality
birth and dying, blossoming borrowing
of metaphors, clouds, pillows, swords,
above the frenzied city or storm, thrilled,
invisible, no shape
shame or ancestry.

Like flying.

See how immortals fuse their children to feather,
fasten them to eternal joy
while the blind, wax birds
are torched.

 

Impossible Instruction

I know you're in there
somewhere;  your incessant
murmuring, a restless stone
in a deep well.

It's too late to be admonished
or desired.  That skein has
shed.  All prophets eventually

sample the sweetmeat,
the core without
its hard, brown shell,

leave a written critique
taped to the backdoor.

Even I am tired of speaking
in riddles. 

Some Things Appear But Aren't Apparent

Vacuum scrunched
and violently squashed,
held down, transported

face cheeks
pressed to a flat,
iridescent surface

the consistency
of stars

only one eye
can search for
understanding

in its limited
environment.

I have come to
recognize,  science
is noose and

God is the black
hooded executioner

on this side.

Have you ever seen
a face so contorted
with passion

it looks like
anger

or a bird suspended
in such a way
you can't decide

whether its ascending,
floating or falling?

Reduced

Are we insatiably damaged? 

Nothing tastes like
sugar, water and basil
heated to crystal

or smells like red
wine and beef blood.

New scorched sweet,
same tart, rich soul.

Now I can only advise you:

You should try to get
your organic back.

In a beach house
with a blue door
in silhouette

a blonde boy
with ringlet curls

evaporates

like boiled
whiskey.

Rears Its Majestic

It's unlikely light would stay
attached to moon if not for
its suspicious nature;

inside each cloud
a core of black,

a pack of wolves.

Every night shadow
performs Shakespeare
reciting damning verse;

fields cling
to sky's dresses like

frightened girls.

What hunts or flies
or runs has no need
for ambiguous inquiry:

who will bury them,
what is their mysterious
duty, to whom should

they pray?

To them Eternity
speaks the language
of wild horses,

rears its majestic,
burning chest

without fear or
hesitation

gallops away.

How Movement is Like Prayer

always the question,
to build straight
or round.

On some level, darkness
meets light, electrons pairing
charge to zero;

in the stable gap between

a tiny, faux
world made of rubber bands
and ink and water

wrapped in sticky
web. 

A subtle movement
somewhere

vibrates the body,
the body attracted-

the sleeping
glittery spider.

The Cold Follows You

I had the same dream
of a man with a body
made of winter gloves;

he followed me through
half of my childhood
without ever speaking.

Sometimes at night,
the darkness takes the shape
of a great wooly beast

hunting

in a snow storm.

Don't Let Your Gifts Deceive You;

you didn't make this world,
its rare spices, thick sweet
oils, its brief guests

and countless dead.

Pleasure and grief are meant
for those who create them
not for those who discover.

Consider the bed without
its lovers, your muscles,
my bruises, our early

morning prayers.

Membrane

I have heard
(mysteriously at night)
there are three worlds.

Like a well-constructed
house, the task becomes
sequentially moving
through them.

When I am unaware
of the purple flaming iris
in the other room

I am in flux

trapped between touch
and numbing, depthless
darkness;

the way out is
the way in and never
ending.

Tear Your Garments

Sweet bitter
unmanageable Sappho,
gold ankleboned
poet,

you be my ally.

When you're born
in a family of men,
you inherit the veil.

You disappear
behind it;  you are
strangled by it.

It is the only thing
that lies between
your blood and

your father's
rage.

Unlike Heaven

We are two spaces;  asymmetrical
forces.  One a mark,
the other erased.

I am God's slave, you
are the abyss;

a stone tower
and its relentless

traitor.

They Are OverFed

Heathens!  Simplicity
is the purest thing of
this world;

the simplest thing-

wordless, selfless
prayer.

Victim-Makers

and I am only and content

to sleep, prey slagged (and stilled) 

by wolves relief :  (final) sacred duty:

cease.

Forward stalk the royal (crowns & kingdoms)

(red, orange, purple?) thieves who will remove

my glue sutured heart (screams in lieu of beat)

for what purpose-Men?  God with reasons made

for careless instruments their demons:  oceans,
distance, lightless caves, infestations, graves
and pretty siren singers.

Let them swim.

Indeed.  

But what of (mine) conflicted dragons,
primeval victim-makers slash(ing) equal
bone and blood and teeth or dreamer?

Stay.  

Burning Horses

What was roughly, deeply
hewn and violent

made seamless.

Was it autumn? scent of
burning horses, leather,
shy leaf  fireworks, yellow
textured skies, cold

anemic like pond fish.

Pink, velour twilight?
thick and bleeding shades
of fresh cut salmon,

split open watermelon.

The narrow dirt road?
aluminum windmill,
six-fingered prophet
held together with

barbed wire and
dissolving duct tape.

Beneath its long, steel legs?
deep in miniature apples,
sage green, worm bruised
and bird tongued to

sweet rot.

Or with the field crows?
stiff robotic waddling,
bead-black coma stares

stabbing mud-stained
leftover snow.

Someone found the fear,
however, wherever

they were consumed
by fire-

somewhere, somehow.

Came Whiffling Through the Tulgey Wood

I lean towards
carnivorous shades
of red;

the vibrant,
rusting, oxidation of oval
cells;  spiraling down,
followed by

a long, uneventful wait.

I've practiced preservation
rehearsed my hunger,
refused to mate,

carefully count
the farmer's stolen hens
and rabbit nests

in bunches,

keep the orange fox
afraid.

A Loosening

The heaviest, final,
awareness- the fear,

the turning out,
the closing in,

the fear,

a foreign, distant,
plastic world,

a loosening. 

Slippery as silicone,
the thrashing spirit
frees its muscled,

coiled tail,

glances backward
at its flaccid, rubber
skein, then

swims away.

The Peeled Eye

I recognize him
after many years - 

the endless grief,
clay-colored sands,
searing heat

death-trap mirages
of belly-dancing
women

with baskets
of half-eaten

melons.

Sunlight on the Mountains

If you are to become
or appear to become
angelic


you must be like
a mountain covered
in a thin layer of God


emanating 
yellow-gold.


Is it possible you
could be as

innocent?

Uncommonly Faithful

Not much here. 
Not prize or punishment,
just pieces of bone
stripped of feather,

grey, cold boulders
arranged in circles

and exquisite fear;

see how its smoky
colorless face turns
back to count

its victims.

Somewhere on
a bleached, naked
ridge

a primitive screech,
a flinging out and up,

far as it could reach
into nothingness

and flickering.

Unbearable Creature

All radiance, untrue;
unbearable beauty
unbearable.

What begins before
light, before flesh,
before virtue?

Empty spaces, opposing
walls, an ancient,
dangerous secret...

a bloodless eye
with fingers.

In the dark, he left
out food expecting
to attract a different

creature, one filled
with asteroids
and quiet stars

skin so shiny
he could see himself
looking back

even at night.

It Seems

it's natural to be
joyous.  Small
white mouths of flower

drink light.

Grief, a cloud
of dust

growing wider.

Guilt
lives between

them.

Sorrow Addict

To my cell mates,  I promise
where the circling birds rise
we will follow;

see their iridescent
shooting arc.

Of these glittering, broken places,
geography of bone & rot

where we came from

bestow them to
the sorrow addicts.

Uniquely qualified, departure;
in truth, the vacant life depends

on violence.

Outside mist, layered hills
shake their heads, dip their scratchy beards

in darkness,

hide the stranger, prisoner
and stolen, fractured pieces
of a ladder.

Counterpart

Someone else leaving with
what you've uncovered;

shadows of belonging
shrinking back into
light,

wings you carved
falling from their frame
like spark,

fashioned a world
from timber's darkness

then darkness.

What I meant
to say is not what
you heard;

words unlocking
the locked prayer

a blessing for the
counterpart.


.

Whoever You Are

Other words for banished
are lifelong commitment.

Dear heart, how you
shoulder your burden

drumming faith
through hollow webs,

sweet juice
of roses, its thorns

unfastened.

Is there a part of you,
outside its sorrow,

that doubts
its gift?

Are you the mother
of our childhood or

the father of
infernal nights?