for my birthday
god gave me ten thousand white birds
so i wouldn't be alone
but i am alone
and for the sake of no one
i'm still awake
hot under the electric lights
deep in my own soup
so i am writing to you
dear lover
i am flying to you
over the asylum's main gate
gliding amidst horns and headlights
and i hope you are home
curled in between cool linens
i am writing to you
in every poem i've ever written
badly, but with sincerity
small-voiced and whimsical
i am trying to love you
love me
i have no shame

meanwhile it's my lunch hour --
the sun burns the cinderblocks pink
12:40 on a thursday with sawdust in my hair
and a piece of lead pinched between
forefinger and thumb fighting the
sudden onset feeling of vivid panic
i'm obliterated by the sense of being alone and
lost outside the plexus of purpose

my docile body is being stretched open
i am churning unsexed and weak
weeping on the steel edge of hysteria
half gouged and puttering beneath
this burden of butterflies in my chest
the girl is a great distance away but
maybe she'll notice my plumage rising
and receding like a brittle sail on a
dark green sea or hear
my cells test the very limits of elasticity
diverging terribly into flamboyant aqueducts
and humming on the wind like
the plow tractor trumpeting in a far-away field

she is a fawn lying on a summer picnic blanket
sprawled on the rolling meadow as if it were a beach
a genuine beauty in the white of the sun's light
wearing a pair of reflective sunglasses holding
her face puckered up expecting a kiss
and a delicate fire surges through me
my eyes are blinded by the green grass
radiant all around her
and my pulse thunders inside my ears
longing to be immersed with her in safety
ripped up by a lust to be accepted and free
and folded together softly against the hard world

i am being hollowed out into electric rivulets
by the painful consciousness of my isolation
by the broiling heatwave of july against
the longest winter of my life
my heart aches in my front shirt pocket
waiting on my phone to light up or ring
and so i fill my ***** glistening torso
with what i hope is a lethal dose
of papaya-coconut water

and so there she stands
your daughter liberty
alone and weak
because you left her unattended
in a sundress and fireman's coat with blood
on her chin and her face contorted
for the cameras to see
stupefied on the edge of the gravel pit
with the confetti ash swirling in her hair
and her eyes filled with animal fear
as her slack body slams against the railing
and a swan song swells in her throat

they use billy clubs to beat back the rats
under the skull of the moon and
the fickle stars like frantic pouncing eagles
the neighborhood dying has scratch marks all over it
diamonds etched in storefront windows
and rollicking clouds of tear gas to make it fun
there's a ****** taking a **** out in the open street
and where's the flag? oh i remember
it's snagged on a parapet five stories up
burning in the ignored sunset between
the silent buildings

we are an enormous pile of sentient garbage
coming up from the rot wearing life preservers
advancing with the picket line tide
blowing flashbang death on flugelhorns
outside the framework of the 2-party system
invented by the mongrels in hollywood
guerrillas moving in troupes thru the city streets
filled with exhilarating hope and
plumes of smoke insurgents chanting
violence is american as apple pie

i keep my tv dark to reflect the flames
of the grocery store outside and my insides
feel ripped up, i've never had a shave this close
squish my denim body against the window like a telescope
to hear the growl from the depths under the city
this is the moment just before something big happens

this is the flashover
this is when the panic begins
there's a man in a tree out in palmdale and
i need the morphine to tell me it isn't my fault
i need my pastor to tell me god doesn't lie
tonight the fuses blew out on an entire continent
tonight i wept

then the immense mass heaves up
and the streets all fill with diamonds
in vivid hot designs
and the country contemplates
the pagan city as a zero.
then the country, driven to pondering,
panics. oh, how the fire frequents the sky
with straightforward accumulation.
it boils the sluggish blood.
there is too much
too much fire in the hands
too much fire in the hearts and eyes
this engine consumes too much
and the fire rages out of control.

in the drifting smoke, i saw bodies
burned to bare bones and the survivors
lunge forward. the chorus girls sprawl
on the sidewalk and are swept away.
the quick flame is the dividing line
the end of the sabbath.

the books all burst into flames and the dancing
is boisterous. my cheek pressed into the wall
of a skyscraper how satisfying. the falling waves
of sparks uplifting and gyrating with the kickers.

follow the long curve of hose-water with
your aching neck and see
the influencers arriving drenched to the skin
in fire-spray to divert the journalists. but they are
helpless and impotent and the edifice slips into
the pavement. this is the unexpected harvest.
and i preach nothing.

the city is dead
the heart in a tourniquet
i'm in the ivory tower
high above the dull roar
my mouth on a megaphone
but it's hard to explain
a subtle chemical change
we're all cinderella
as the midnight devours
so close your eyes
we'll wait it out
i didn't consent but
you woke me up for this
when i was dreaming deeply
and now everyone else is comatose
we're all alone now
standing behind closed doors
the silence has ravaged me
this raw wound is my home

the world has turned and said
just wait okay
now is the time, okay
you can stop, okay
you can go home
it's okay

the world has turned into
a blue bear
skidding thru a white
floodlight

the sun is a red lion
dripping wet paint onto day
the moon is a wet black dragon
with spirals in its eyes
and stars are the fireworks
that light the way

the men of the world have turned
the tears in my eyes
into glass
my eyes into glass
the world has turned
my body into dust
into dust
into dust
my body into dust

I kept my golden hair long and my wings unshorn
to escape the magnet-hold of the earth mother. I am
a flying splinter longing for purity above all; the
ascending son, the moth mad for the light.

I was the great ancient hunter battling the new
psychic terrors and herding the demons of cynicism
and suspicion into clouds like the holy white buffalo
god. Tracking the ghost animal resources of allegiance
and truth against the abject sky of platitudes extended
by industrial *******.

I was waiting to be compensated by the malicious
one for my dainty life above ground. To be whipped
by the same wind who untangled the great sphinx.
To be interrogated by the shape-changing sick god
that dwells on the back side of the moon among
crystallized bat wings and ripped-apart bodies
of the birds we sent him.

I was wallowing in the titanic ashes -- hibernating
to become more human. Tasting the soot of the
death of my father, the sky-king. I was feeding my
body on sleeplessness; meditation, fasting,
occasional flagellation. I was starving out the snake
in my spinal cord, who once grew fat and lethargic on
lager, ecstasy, ******* machismo and astounding
mythologized ***.

I was the paltry son of a weak puddle of indecision
which I have emulated as the sacred king. Drowning
myself in alcohol, living in a dank burrow under
he earth; an oven bird. Existing like mycelium in
the endless subterranean bog.

Inhaling the disparate ether of stardust and
becoming buoyant; then
Exhaling the syrupy ambrosia of solar power into
the blades of grass which grew up through my mouth
and formed a pillow for my silent dreams.

I am the eternal garden boy.
Spading the soil, preparing a place,
sifting ashes into the bedwork from
all my previous warrior deaths. Here I
will grow the abundant climbing vines,
the exotic grains, the fragrant wild flowers
and rare apple trees in geometric design.

And she will approach me there, a sprouted seed --
by the fountain of course, that eternal spring. The
girl of solar fire, the girl who loves gold, and we will
lie together but never to each other. Kissing the fresh
sutures, we will quench each others' souls and be
hermetically sealed together there in the old stone-
walled garden, rolling among the lilies on heaven's
green swell, letting sunlight fall on us like the anvil.

Cloistered, caressing, sequestered in the
warm earth now, bundled together in the sod,
tranquil with the supple bliss of satiety when
every muscle lies snugly like a curved petal
at peace inside the corolla.

Here I will blend rawness into passion,
obsession into desire. Turn brittle
brown manure into shiny green
leaves, luscious roses; Breed
epiphanies from disaster.