The radio is wracked with fervent calls
(Minutiae of obscure variety)
But silence comes from one room down the halls
As one man fights his own impiety.
Whatever ideologies he held
Before his current call have kept quite mum
For no two words their meanings yield to meld
(His god of information now is dumb).
A slight gives way to crack the dam of calm
As one man's altar all at once forsakes,
And pray-ers praying prayers receive no balm
When mortal ignorance its sanction makes.
     Men in apocalypses are left fire-less.
     (Though no one listens to the wireless.)

Mother bear in a waterfall
With bigger thoughts than blonde harlots
Eating porridge,
Fallen starlets with outer space in their hair.

Just you wait;
I'll be the happiest little sonofabitch
You've ever seen.

Some small consolation, if any.
That weekend we spent with our
Necks perpendicular to our spines,
Of course I still remember the films we watched.

I condition my hair with split infinitives
And live off the poisoned dew that settles
Every morning in my closet.

Turn your little black dress inside-out,
I've got this magic idea for a recipe
But we're going to need some ants
And that crazy Harryhausen dream you've got up in your attic.

Ten or twelve little blond kids up
On the cliff, each ten or twelve years old
And dancing with a flame-Buddha called "Home".

Let's spend this week underwater,
I'd much rather give up my weight and my due
If it ensured me any small hour
With you. Oh, god how I love you anymore.

I may have told you this a while ago,
But did you know the first Pledge of Allegiance
Put us some good height above God?

Sometimes I find the sugar in my gas tank
Makes for a rough start in the morning,
Not that I particularly want to go anywhere,
But it's what I've thought that counts.

He's a bit upset that I skipped movie last night:
But I can't play horizontal baseball
With my violent, violent imaginary friend.

The Rubik's cube beats deep in my chest
Without a hand to cheat and rearrange the stickers.
Claude enunciates something queer into my ear
And turns off the lamp with a snap.

I've noticed that I've stopped noticing;
The way I look at the forbidden face
And the way it looks at me
No longer stirs the heavens.
No sailboat turns on its heaving sea
When our corneas connect in a brazen
Fire, nor do any fidgeting mourners
Swallow graves over our crashing pink hands.
The tin-suited band piece has long ago
Replaced any emotion that could inflame
My cheek with a khaki cigarette smoke
And spun out days like empty bags.
     Still for the rainwater of his laugh alone
     Might I swim the Earth's crooked orbit.

Where is the cake? You
totally promised me there would be
cake. Words fail me. That simpering
gleam in your eyes is well-deserved,
you swine.

Yes, I'm still ****** about it.
You said I could have some. All
I wanted was a bite because I don't even
particularly like cake, but I guess
all those sweet words of yours were
just artifice.

No, that's okay. I understand, you
just did what you had to. If that entails
giving away my cake, I don't care.
I'm not going to hold a grudge or anything
over something stupid like cake. Ha!
Don't be ridiculous, it's not like the cake was good, right?
Carrot cake, you say?

Someday there will be time to reminisce,
But now my current plan is one of dread:
To yank your hair and whisper "**** on this,"
And pull your eyes out of your ******* head.

Oh, I guess I don't really know.
The music. Texas amber.
The voice of the moon. The barred door.
The death of the dog. Ampersands.
Woman underground.

The silk woods.
Women in purple houses.
The underside of the whale, the sun.
Have I got my shoes?
Words with even emphasis.
Speech impediments; the pen.
Too many rooms.
Any kind of jam, jelly.
Vertex in space.
Mint-flavoured Scientology advertisements:
Early Easter Sunday.
Strips of Velcro, ****** hair.
Original manuscripts and forks.
Tea-leaf autumns.

Footfalls.
Summon the poets.
Start the El Camino.
Strike my face with a match.
Eat Wonderland.

Light through and through
Heavy extensor to the peach
Occlusion in the blue graph.

Stem toward the finger,
Clasp the little star
That looked so ghostly to her

And the sphere spears
Through and through us.
Because it isn’t the dreams

We look for in the sea that will
Matter. That hardly matters at all.
A hand might part the sand, but a fall

From the sky
Can ****. The water ought to part easily
But won’t move for a measly body.

The living touchstone shows us just how like the sea
A stone can be, and so a man to poetry.

So what is he? A western with the bangs
Of blacks and whites? A horror film where one
Small man must **** the wound of the unknown?
A period romance, perhaps: the flags
With mathematic turns, and fronts that free
The watchers of anxiety, and drive
Out all the critics with a glistening nerve.
I cannot fathom what he is to me.

He is. He is. He is. He is. You see,
That’s all he needs to be. The seas, the seas.
What should I care for these when all my shaky
Sustenance from his Apollan whiteness
Falls as mana in the wilderness?
He is to me what film can never be.