december 2015
(i)
...again this clear space is terrifying
my wild, ancient universe has returned
to push its claws into my face
and slip its prehistoric tongue between my lips
the incurable need
to reach out and touch the passing rocks
dispensing gravity like a god
selling evil as some entrée on a menu
and here, behind these closed eyes, is the usual
barbaric mess
the effort to sculpture darkness
while the sky sits
smugly cutting the truth into my back...
(ii)
...these moments of epic poverty
have been waiting behind my eyes for years
and for years I have watched each heartbeat in the mirror
wave farewell
and spit into the road
my own exhilarating extinction
a routine, nightly passion
in which the trees lean down
and nibble the lobes of my ears
an enchanting, cruel eucharist
that swallows even the world’s shadows
and conspires to liberate murder
a user-friendly interface
the code for my binary heart
drifting from addiction to addiction
as the trees lean forward
and press their teeth against my eyes
ready to free the worthless riches beyond...
(iii)
...where has this wound, this unyielding terror
come from
the ululations and tears are themselves hypnotic
an overwrought, fatal ecstasy
that hangs about my neck
a million fragments of justice
yet I am the blackened dog beneath my skull
I am the starshine
that extracts and darkens liberty
what have I to do with such terror
I am not the bullet that flies
I am the prince who sees in every word
a thousand holocausts
a liquid everyman, audacious and cunning
dressed in a million fragments
I bow or courtesy as required
before this fatal deference takes hold...
(iv)
...each day a clairvoyant torture
bestows its sentence upon my open heart
I have been caught
with demons hiding behind my teeth
I am to be wracked
an ode, a mimic
a defiance to be stretched out across the howling skies
and thrown as offal to the constellations
the star-vultures already opening their wings
already gliding down to feast upon this demonic balladry
this cruel fusion of meat and logic
the stew of my existence
a confession animating every human tongue
the nervous eyes between our teeth
quietly blinking, waiting for their tomorrow
and all sublime days thereafter...