sleeper

she wryly observes
my nerves
lined up and shot--
slowly drifting off in ashes and smoke--
her eyes
secreting nectar--
reckless, coquettish--
tracing the fissures
that crack my veins
and bleed sweetly between me.

oedipus, electra

dead folks deserve their malodorous embraces--
acclimated to hearts and
ruinous logic--
they contain themselves entirely
and huddle in the terror
of god's absence,
liberated into madness,
dragging fleshy little hands across
their slackened lines of luck.

i'm no means to be wrapped themselves amongst,
driven determinedly towards extremes
in their unhinged attempts at thought.
my generation's fading fast-- adulthood evolves,
the weak are trapped.
emotional response without responsibility,
childlike regression, impenetrable infinity.

blimey

drive me farther your
narrow quarters
lengthwise horizontal madness streaming
nothing more
than common courses swimming through my bloods
burning my arteries and coiling inside of me,
perched like satan's snake
driving hormones home to
bedstuy and beyond
the city's steady lights--
the 4 stop's crowded with
crooks
and shades of otherwise empty nights.

swim, baby-- drowning not thinking--
arms can wave, so every save
carries us forward. joined by shoulders
tanned in afternoons
and cornering their aspirations,
students of iron cast,
dripping with sincerity
and oh so boring.
vapors
wandering the landscape,
painted in blank colors
primary and washed,
grazing the grass like
the cattle of geryon
or the honey dark jazz cats of 1928.

salty eyes get wearied of
making spirals by the hour--
unraveling gemini and
atomizing solitaire,
old cancer chokes and separates, but
burying the guillotine takes
loads of effort, sand.
waspy weather nips my wrists.
my hands dry out.

held to the molded curves i envy,
the fleshy suit of maternal
responsibility--
quiet lips that whisper dagger truths, i mutter
what i wonder,
and you meet me--
while we kindle the backyard tinder,
i'm already gone.
by the time our arms have crossed and lost
themselves in their warmth--
no more, i'll know--
i'll be dying on the morrow.

third person

he drifts on like a dream

narnibithia

i'm devoted to dying slowly,
watching never frozen faces
dry up, dust out, and run with the wind,
and living hidden in empty spaces
beyond the chinks of popular imagery,
where time drifts without notice
and memory wears thin

deaf eye

the days wear decay in the
dialogues i'm trapped,
i'll sacrifice my dying friends,
their faces trade for masques--
means sharpened into rusted points
to meet their grisly ends,
they know the old are going and they
rush to take revenge.

"the girls have all grown phalluses
and paint their faces gray,
the blacks forgot the revolution--
they're waiting for their pay,
the jew is numb from hands he's wrung
recalling his bad luck,
hoping against the deeds they've done
that their dreams are yet to come."

in turn i've built an empire
reflected in the lakes,
that horizon line may limit you
but it falls right at my gate.
material can beckon you but
cheap filling never sates--
across my heart these last few words
the blind can't penetrate

monday

i know jokes that end themselves eternally--
folks who've slowly learned to slip old
childhood hopes through oiled fingers
and cope--

who read the
slight in hearty laughter
and the gleam of toothy smiles,
sitting by smoldering set dressings
and whispering under the clinks of cloudy drinks.

the forgotten loves that visit my dreams
grin through tears and lose their faiths--
their memories went dry by habit
but their flaws still keep.
i say shame's in loyal's grave;
i'll hold her closely as we sleep--
when sunlight comes she'll just be dust
and i won't need to weep

tch

i have rewritten my rage and
worn it in my skin,
in
mean jagged fingers that cut and bleed
ink,
unsung through teeth
and shimmering brown,
in light behind dreams that
dip down

the movies

dead men give birth to the world--
they starve after hypnotic strobes
rapid coughing flicks downtuned to their
waking lives summed up in few hours alone.
we hum the hymn of myth in
gone remembrance of hopes we once
believed-- dancing hands that would share
our gods and arms wrapping around us
like silk ribboning.

consider me covered and fading like
ghosts broken into echoing streets.
in love i've learned the imagined end
of what we'll never see--
mirrored glasses line the vaulted halls
of a true eternity:
images reshuffled, the intoxicating dream