Poems 1-4





Earth! Deep desert diving, pound sand!
Spread wings like luster in the yellow-
blue sky above and fly! Onward to
the heaven of shale and slate that awaits
all seekers, all dreamers and peekers. Find
the catatonic night and whisper to its
pagan rhythms, chant to the pentagram
of planets and glitter. Scale the vaulted
catacombs of the cathedral's ceiling and
piece precious sapphire, gold, azurite
into the eternities. Eat the fine-soiled
grunge of Sunday morning so softly
and crass, swallow the sun and let
him glimmer in your clay-painted masks,
façades, uncanny, pained. Break the boiled,
hard-baked blacks and whites and reds,
and pour them to the rune, our bell.
A swirling sacrifice ecliptic and true,
shadow the candle and cloud the mind,
peel rotting ferment, double-bent, and
love it sore. These things are fragile and few.


Fire hold my hand and laugh me close. I
dance amiss your mist, hot-craggily, bold, and fed.
You lust the cleaner soul, the girl in red
rough cotton to the pore. Squelching light
like gasoline and arson's feathered king
you sing and guard my gourd, my guide to weather more.
Rich flame in rain the sparks to ashes' clan 'ere
destinèd and lofted led, a prayer for kerosene
and dread to ward the wispy ghosts of
mountains keen and rued. Your maiden rose now raises
hellish deeds, mer flamboyante, this time chalant
to guide the lover home in fervence rent. Your lantern,
paper dragons blazing brush the harrowed lure, the hook set
last in fall, whistle-leaves a morning breaking.
Your ponder, fathom, know is knotted snuff,
a hollow sorted stuff for sinners, livers, tongues,
and whores to whom your fine-tuned's linger latter,
never first to brave the moors.


Air, the dreaming bane debonair in fame
among the window panes I see, frosty beams
reviving naught like a puppet fraught in
froth forgotten. Saccharine divinity, ambrosìal
raw symphony of seven flats, your music my
profusion as fair pithy-errant pizzicato,
winter dead at dour bravado. Wights whole be mere
oxygen bereft toward peaks of kites -- and then
your silence, moment mortal, nothing care past
breath to breathe, an ease for heads hung-
over, floating seraph, tetract clover, zephyr bound
to soothe the sore, waft soprano by
design, delendal chores and calembours and
wit compacted fine. You scent the
scene, conspiring not a wiff or whim. Chicanery
consumes the mirrored sods, whilst the silted lapsus
linguae your umpteenth protegé, the
temp'ratures and thistle-flax your gods.


Water mend your musings, rime your
slyvan clair de lune well-crested. Effervesce
your holy forthwith never festered, brothed,
nor bottled, bereaved to bubble-shimmered
clamshell, flotsam-wild, wet-detested. Combobulate
my reason, darkling 'midst rare sparkling
kingdom, crown your own unmartyred Time, crush still
your hasty green and lime, a citrus sound and serpentine
to the wyvern name in white. Free-drown my wants
and wishes, surf my tempered foot of thought and wash
me, foam, a child's star buoyed frozen to the
birds; When: exponents pathed from home. I
want to clasp your cleavèd nightmare-whale's
sacrosanct and savor, ice the twisted rims
of galaxy, your calibur, your flavor floundered
open, dust-dipped, boxed, and hoping less in
all a springtime's feathered essence, rain may sooner
bright the sailor's shape and distill old putrescence.