Sick ink 
      vomited belly up on the throw rug
      as if I had forgiven it,
      the swallowed ball 
5     of my poisonous poem, a loaded ode 
      to limitlessness and light--
      What trash!  
      as if the sky-- vapid and superior in its imperial blues
      didn't know how to bite!
10    Mistakes, mistakes! 
      The pen's a miracle of mayhem, wild slips
      of a wrist once slitted;
      the bleeding, careering nib,
      a moult of details in the schitzophrenic flow:
15    my mangy life,
      my frozen embryo 
      carelessly cast from the shelf, unlidded 
      and palely little.
      The cornflower fists 
20    ache to begin, the watery lungs 
      two skinned, amneotic fish.
      A bonfire, a bonfire! 
      Something huge and ruinous with real red in it! 
      That's what goes, what really goes
25    with this stone decor, 
      this face hung in a mirror slashed to tears. 
      Heat, heat
      anything to exhaust 
      this caustic blank in my being, torn calendar-- 
30    Journals, drawn loves, alien lines
      poems mouthed from poems 
      --dead-weight papers pushed to a death heap
       a Jew harvest at Dachau--
      Perfect things 
35    as final as a corpse, 
      ashes to ashes.
      The matchsticks itch 
      to finish it.
      Irritable Rubicon  
40    of lava, language vulcanzied on language, 
      I cross you languidly. 
      I am nearly asleep 
      in the oxygenless air. I am tired, tired, 
      tired of curses, tired of cures
45    tired of the alphabet.
      The wall, infinite sheet, 
      turns intense as an oven, the nails  
      must be melting...
      And here I stand 
50    awash and exhausted, perfumed in the rolls  
      of corspse-smoke, 
      words burned to whorls. 
      Too tired to live, to die, to anything 
      kilned in skin.

      Half animal and man in my shambling frame
      I ache toward the open doorway;
      wounded and wronged in my make-believe flesh,
      blazed and amazed by a million teardrop eyes,
5     my every ear alert to illumination
      in the star-flying dark and flak daylight--
      I hunch against the wind of forever come.

      I stare at my figure
      too dull to doll
      it up with knots, wry ribbons
      that stitch the wild hair into a tail.
5     The hips flare out
      from the belly sack, a hairy flood
      of becomings, selves
      I may invite back for a drink...
      Incipient breasts
10    flow molded from mounded shoulders,
      nipples stiff to be bitten.
      It's womanish,
      except for the blowfish.
      Figgy balls
15    complacent as labia, shed placenta
      from some god-afterbirth.
      The dill a willie
      soft as a loaf or foggy forethought,
      clitoral when licked
20    by a mind or a lip
      anything that drugs the blood
      into the long cave,
      the manger
      hung with drums, a terrified beating
25    that surges and squeezes.
      A swallowed heart
      would be less insistent, more nurturative,
      provide a maturer moaning
      than this hollow stick
30    with its found sounding, a seashell 
      dragging its echo.
      Hot, prophetic
      folds saunter simmer-shimmeringly,
      lacteal, erect.
35    The wet coast
      solders its salts against the groin,
      sand and fire and thighs.
      A night, a womb
      floats her sewn awning over us,
40    a marmalade
      softness constricted to eloquence.
      Stars hung out to dry,
      zen observers,
      mark our dartings
45    like twins in the linen.
      Love, love
      swells and sweats
      between us, cloisonne oysters
      stripped 
50    from their bone shells,
      the shellack of evolution
      returned to nudity.
      Somewhere, hidden
      below the neckline of waters
55    that define us,
      my semen rot
      and wait, rot and wait,
      acid prisoners
      pale to escape.

      an Ariel Colossus,
      Armageddon without the glosses;
      I'll look and take my losses,
      get down and get my rocks tossed--
5     sweeter than a Shiva
      for an enemy in the river.

      The scenery of the ribs is a stage-set:
      medieval coils of veins,
      cracked flames 
      and the abysmal bellows,
5     the gold heart going like pocket-watch,
      muffling a photoed face in its hands.
      Heart! O Heart!
      Look at the ruins you have maneuvered!
      the hothouse monster who smahes the panes
10    and leaves the scene in spasms.
      Mysteries
      stiffen the pinions 
      of God's black bat,
      dark Lucifer, soiling the filigree panelling
15    as he loiters, fingering a silk cigarette.
      He's plausible, 
      a skirmish of smokes and dishwater, lonely 
      for a light or a toke....
      A molten, mirrory backdrop
20    floats his eyes through the chest like train-lights;
      A few, stray, unused thoughts
      flashing and dangling
      assemble the scarecrow
      who puts goodness to flight.

      Eyes that banquet upon every minute that intends itself!
      Throat that lowers to the water you'll drown in;
      how horribly a face pours out words,
      the search lights just gone on behind the eyelids
5     turning down another forgotten road....
      Azelea veins fill with bitter beauty,
      ending in exuberance and death.

      An icosoles triangle 
      constructed by chance
      as when the world falls 
      together on the bed,
5     or some comet constellation
      in mercuric increments descends
      a star hat down
      on some heightened head.
      Shards of naked eloquence,
10    permanent aquantaince in a glance,
      how many years of staring at life
      had ocean-sanded to a soul?
      Shapes of light and greatness
      confound the eye to quietness
15    and all the rest as well, unless
      confessing naked eloquence
      and stretched to a howl
      over petulant rocks
      in the barbarous tasseling of dawn
20    I stand with my back 
      to the midnight clocks
      and drop my cock to the caustic waters,
      my soul to spawn.

      Vouchsafe my voice may its voyage make
      beyond closed body, its closets and its coughs;
      And may my uncertain meaning  sweeten
      and my white intention leaven
5     whatever hoarfrost horror might roughen
      or conspire with sliding Time to take.
      When your look alights, so soulfully open,
      my syllables Philippic to protest,
      each cabinet burst, their vacant emptiness.
10    So hollowly going your full gaze along,
      a skinny whistling wind round gravid earth,
      I moan with thinness where you stand strong,
      a willess whisper strained across a mountain's growth.
      So you uphold me wherever I go
15    (an errant profligate invisible above)
      whose forgotten as soon as sighed, and who blows
      himself to nothing to herald aloud 
      how the green solid world unfurls below.

      Oh, language, why have you left me
      and tongue why have you forsaken me?
      The waters of my mouth are as a rock.
      My words are a fountain that no longer runs
5     the clouds of my eye are dry.
      The fields of my being are burnt to stalks,
      their verdure lies shocked and degraded.
      I am shucked and hollow only now.
      That which flowed through me is now fled.
10    Cisterns in my lungs deep with bowls of meaning
      lie emptied and shattered; they are dead.
      My soul has walked under the eves of despair
      and stepped into a shadowy place.
      The shapes that beheld my hands
15    now are fled as in a broken dream;
      chance sentences and meaningless accents
      appall the day worse then the most wretched silence.
      The new time of the morning no longer glorifies me,
      afternoons are hot, confused with musings;
20    I am no more a thing to myself without you, o song!
      a dead man wrapped in today's living,
      a whisper that cannot hear itself.
      Time indulges the spectacle, space adheres;
      temptation that once so strongly bade me onward
25    like new dress laid out before me
      folds soiled and dusty before my sense.
      Chance and disaster, my twins,
      bring nothing, are bright in nothing, come to nothing;
      they are sold and dead, unmournable whores.
30    The mountain from which I saw myself, and perceived love,
      as doves perceive it in the tilled field,
      the open homes quaint with chimney smoke,
      is flattened and ashes now. I am nothing and nowhere
      a traveler with no goal for his feet,
35    a melody without purpose, hissed to a screech,
      an arrow without target or trueline--
      misery without meaning, despite double sadness,
      a low moment stubbornly remembered,
      without reason, without fixtures, like an old scald.

      Sweet willing water of my mother's body
      why have you left me here?
      My heart once so vivid and precious within me,
      is now incased in sand. The thoughts of my father 
5     are as strangers to me, unbidden and unwelcome;
      we never traveled very far together.
      Sleepless sour frowns on my muse's face
      create ignorant clouds inside me.
      Streams rush by battling, happy and buoyant,
10    while I stand aside. Leaves crack into fruit,
      my blossoms have never hardened or matured,
      they orbit ignorance and ecstasy irrelevantly.
      Maddening ruts follow their own roads nowhere.
      The seasons cringe into change. I, larval,
15    wallow in wasteful wonder bewilderingly;
      my body is the scrapped habitat of apes,
      the single plume of a doomed bird: an ostrich, an eagle.
      the razors of my eyes have told to dullness,
      and are bloodied and blunted,
20    numb with too many things. The water
      is at my feet; my feet are cool
      in the growing roll of water, laughed at
      and comforted are the ankles. The walk is easy; 
      the knees are held lightly, shining-weighing.
25    And now my lungs are stamped with the new motion.
      A heavy mercury, bright and without mercy,
      holds the muses' potent time, a cadence 
      against teeth, increasing in loveliness,
      and sufferers into the appellate gullet
30    like a cold breath, an endless spurring.

      Cool is the gravestone laid by for thee,
      Soft is the expected Ariel that confounds thee
      whose wings awakening with the light
      are a memory, a daydream without curse
5     fragrantly remembered, new moan hay in the nostrils.
      Night with its many clouds has come,
      day still waits to arrive;
      thinking of nothing I have crept into a collar,
      diamond deeded and deified... these thoughts
10    counsel closely as fast friends, 
      I am cinched in.
      When the angel of longing tramples desire,
      when dust is with us and green grass is not,
      when fear is with us and assurance is lost,
15    how may we recover forever?
      Day comes with its ray's visit and raillery,
      long walks in your yard empty of thought.
      These ears have continued hearing
      long rivers of unpolluted wine.
20    These eyes are victims saying all.
      Howl! How may I be made fit for life 
      who is so misshapen? whose mirror is a question-mark?
      I feel the wing of Ariel and have touched the hot hoof!
      [How long and literal are your ages, Desire!]
25    My skin slits from its default.
      Each sense sits configured for glory, again,
      each moment made a mandible to apprehend,
      each cherry converted to a church to enter.
      With sapience and with praise I enter,
30    with blood on my righthand,
      with heaven on my shoulder,
      with bones in my sorrow,
      with wind as my base and wickedness my tower,
      the smile of dust and with a brow of Love,
35    I enter this somersault I have been dealt.

      All these years walking and where have I got to?
      Looking before me I see advancing troubles,
      looking behind me I see the nothing dust,
      feel the cold pouring down my neck....
5     to the left a man looking down and still walking:
      icy regret and old habitations.
      To the right, that which I desired and have forgotten.
      Looking down, I see my feet and what they might have been;
      looking up, I see the judgment not withheld....
10    Glancing back within myself
      will some strange being not return my stare?
      Inside-- inside I sense the blessings and the bliss,
      some silver shadow of my desiring unsullied;
      steeped with ferocious being burns my happy littleness;
15    within is the crown unconquered!
      What a man desires of the while, who will gainsay?
      What voice will arise in the world's opinion
      and with that opinion whip him?
      My foot has gone upon a triple tread:
20    tears, and salt of pain, anxiety and trepidation,
      pave the mortal manner of my advancement.
      What will slow my going or disable my loitering?
      What will my speed achieve?
      When the mountains rear tomblike with their snow
25    how will the saying sky stay silent then?
      When the eyes look lions but no heart slays
      and the bones of fire and age are upon us,
      who will court his recollection to remember
      what miracles we had put into our years?
30    When action and touch and art are temptation no longer
      will cold and cold attract us
      among the millions of moments and maybes?
      Who will achieve even unto the limit of a single breath?
      When the oracle discourses with the dunce
35    there can be no God.
      When a brave man is framed by his fears
      or the coward surveys in hope the majesty of his grave,
      there can be no God.
      When a priest is used to plea with the blast
40    there can be no God.
      When the populace is swooning for holy approbation
      there is no God.

      The face is porcelain,  sourceless 
      perfection 
      towed  from the cemetery 
      whites of the sea 
5     and spit upon by lime,
      cremated to this coldness, this clarity.
      Blank statuette,
      unriven by sweetness or sorrow,
      smooth as a blind moon
10    or dew on a cactus!
      Follicleless, is this  
      the end of wrath and worry?
      Does a wild rabbit shred cries
      below your shine?
15    Anatomy entrapped by a sheen,
      mechanism steeled to a polish,
      there are such depths in your surfaces!
      A star could not finish it.
      No sun
20    can blanche you beyond what you are.
      Limitless
      glares anger at you larynx
      that never once hurt open for air.
      How does it feel to be in there
25    seamless and beaming? Tell me, tell me!
      Open your mouth and bleed
      a God-spout,
      a riot.