This skull whines in its
sagging baggage;

            toot toot toot

goes the rabble,
moving their thought
packages along

           the neural airwaves.

electrostatic convulsions
take the heart,

turning it into a neat
neon abyss

                    full of radio top 40s
and cardiological indigestion.

spectral oracles deliver their
diabetic sermons
near the kidneys--
                     It will happen soon,
             they say
                    

and in the brain a dreamer
kicks an unpinned grenade
around and
says:

what has happened
tomorrow
was
happening today and
will happen yesterday;

and on and on
it goes.

calamitous is the
           bend
of the           gum
and mouthtissue

as it curves

ever
inward

towards a
candy *****;

deep is the forgetting;
lasting is the purse
of
regret

sometimes
a wound-eyed night
stares up at you

indefatigable

like an opening
lotus

bleeding its
sticky seeds
into a famished
pond

like gory streams
of memory
curling their ruined
arms around
your body

maybe you know
or don't know
that they are no longer
here.

That they have never been,
and never will be again.

that those invisible warmths
that you and I
once knew so well

were only brief
and soluble oils
in the lightless
and infinite
sea of our living

House,
A light socket finds the first tooth of god.

Church, I am too old to imagine the waking hours.

Sleep,
Being in the water
when the song
is heard.

I am a calico dream,
slipped in a
teethless gown,
holding a warm
candle to light
your way;

I am a lightfoundling
shimmering in
the rays
of a new unmaking;

I am an ulcered
goodness;

I am
incorporated into
the bodies
of monsters

a fabulous Mars
smoking red cigars
in a penguin suit
outside the door
of Providence;

who is this old man
who walks without a
cane;

is he the needless
demon of war?

We sit in an empty house;
there is the torrent out there,
needling in the soft gloaming;

It is safe in here,
with the
old chairs
and peeling
shelves;

This is a peace
incumbent on the exclusion
of a wintry torment
which wheels and keens
in solitude

always outside
the door