the old promenade of the
graveyard loops its anarchic
teeth around me;

I think of Mister Death

his eyes unclouded by fear.

I think of cysts and powders
and drainages;

I think of pills in tight orange
cases, meticulously labeled

I think of needles and ******
and God;

I hear the trouncing and
bumping of lives

like the overlapping shadows
of branches beneath an
Elder tree.

I ask the eating
dusk if Mister Death
ever visits the littlest
of the graves


to wonder where it all went
wrong.

crystals of orange peel
burnish your fingernails-

my love:

twist your hair into
crescent knots
and push the bedtable needles
towards God;

make dreamkissing meals
of the palms beneath you;
and seek together for our
sour calamity

scion of extinguished stars,
skinfeeling wraith,
what has crossed your
mind today?

th  e nothingman

goes to play

                in wide          wide
playground

doodling
                 with pal e
nons
ense

              c rayons a new

jewely
skin


he is made with


nothingbones &
hollow
teeth
&
the soup

howlingness

of hers
and his
and theirs and
if's

newish
fatty

comedy

thickish about th
e
[e
dg
es]

budding mouths of graffiti
sprawl beneath her fingertips;

her eyes, like lanterns
flicker with saccharine ghosts
and she lets all of it
fall from her hands -

millions of untidy
little lives

the pavement
forest eats all wings
and spins them into ossified
gossamer--
the long teeth
of normalcy

electric Mary
sings pretty songs
now;

never sad.

isn't that funny?

some eel
swims in her
eye

and she sings of
birds

Are you now
knowing now is
            {never now}
but rather

shuttered with false
teeth

the dogs ****
in frictionless ghettos
eyes wide and hard
like gems

the gross nice teeth whitely blanched
come down on the raving tongue
drenched in
sea-salt and mercury
to become a mass
unregulated by design,
tinseled with
the heads of dolls;
their black button eyes
are sewn onto the
sun

who flinches and gnashes
like an insect in a
glass bell


new to
pain.

sit darling
      do sit

this is no new crime

yes this has been done before many times

           its all very regular I assure you
the procedures all the rage

                                                     its easy
                                                          really­
all you need is a little blade

maybe a sharp spoon


and perhaps a clear glass jar;
                 yes, a Mason jar, that'd be quite appropriate.

and you simply scoop


and you don't stop scooping -- stop squirming, darling, this is important--

until you are sure,
you are sure its quite well and gone.



and you place it all in the little jar and seal it up,
all nice and tight--

so nothing can get out, you understand.

and then you're all finished-- don't cry, darling,
its finished, see?

There's nothing there now.


Don't you feel so much
lighter?


                    If only I knew what it felt like
                                      it must be
                                     exquisite.


Isn't it exquisite, darling?

this mad gristle flays itself
against the rigid
pyres of the stars;
it is lean, supple,
newmouthed and
hardly born;

It has trembled in the
arms of a woman,

and eaten of the fetal
apple--

stringent, stretched sticky
between the fingers
like a lung.

This the morning of demise
for the longhearted her.
She eats into herself you see;
when there's nothing left to
eat

a face walks the distance
a stye in the blackness
it cries pale tears
as the walls are raised above it
and there is nothing,

nothing at all
it can say

for there is nothing to
say
nothing at all

and beneath the sand
trembling armies crouch
around the body
of a young girl

younger
and more beautiful
than anything anyone has seen

more beautiful still than
the black blades of flowers
than the clean ribs of Heaven
than the calligraphy of
soiled limbs

and nobody
has anything
to say.

red kisses
dart persecuted and carnal
past the
avenue despots;

This night, at least,
is saved

I am slipped in the demon end
of god's wiry hair,


pulled and plucked at;
made a nuisance of,
made a thorn in the
crystal eye of this



new Allmighty

this the


clack
clack
clack


of ductile
orange flesh
filling motel rooms
hinting at all the



lovely beasts
convulsing in the wretch
of telecomputers



and marmalade.

the blooming head of
purple smog reaches its feathered petals
across the bowl--

scentless, ascetic,
nearly seamless
with the iron clouds

what lies moony in the
river ****,
scalded and
heavy-thumbed?

the light etches
the retinal disk,

plastered in
blue--
green--
red--
bands,
super-positioned
in the mildewed afterglow of
an exigent god--

garrulous,

too upright for death.

hands seek the
                           blue ribbon--
the flutterer

                                            in butterfly

                                   scars.
catch it.

                      please. This too cannot

    go to god.

                                      The heavens

                     are glutted with
                              joy.

Ale-fiend of a sky-
neatly blotted,
looking down
with sour
red
I

Darkling, folded in absentia,
Eye-wandering through incorporeal portals–

Now a smile,
heretical and broad
as her the sun’s lonely gates.