Who's that leopard in ecstasy
(and Ampersand Cornelius Gray)
who learned to trot briskly under lamp poles
and rescue a ***** worn mug from the clay
                      that which bore them.

She signaled with a passing glance that the entrenchment should pass,
giggling eyes that sparkled from pearls and concrete teeth.
I pivoted on the unmoving coordinates, the universe revolved.
From within her a spirit rose up and clasped my face in its hands,
and I, red with terror, dove head first towards the sands.

He howls out, burdened.
He is unaware of my condition, beneath the waters;
here I lie in wait,
too, in weight.
Here I lie
beneath the crushing force of the universe.
On the bottom of the sea, the top of the Earth,
a smokestack, of golden flames, fills my heart,
rumbling, confident and unafraid.

The Leopard sits, its paws splayed out on a bed of ferns.
Upon its raised position, it lies, basked in ethereal warm light.
The fierce awe of strength and knives of metal,
racing above ground on knees of silent, yellowed corduroy.

Who waits with the Leopard, alone and cold?

Who knows the beast the captures my wonder?

Here I lie, in servitude, enslaved in my claw cave.
My paws are pale, in this oddly worn nave.

A universe that breathes its natural joy,
through geysers, and the summer sprinkling
of sugar atop burning crimson oranges.

Which finds necessitude,
in orbits of tender frequency.

Which finds contempt:
in vacuous headlands
and marshes filled with spider's legs.

Which seeks unity:
by golden dusty saturation
and celestial chapels
strewn with haunted bursts
from depressed musical chimneys.

Where I am,
futilely seeking to dethrone myself.

["Your mothers and your fathers,"
said he, at the AA meeting beneath
the musty and deserted Anglican church.
"Where the rooms and the furniture breathes
a sigh of relief as you enter.
Where your bodies succumb
to violent pangs of movement,
movement that is nothing other
than the tides of the ocean
and the tautness of a kite string by the shore.
Where three hundred white silken dancers
trot in flowing garments
Dutch windmills to catch the wind
and flow closer to omnipotence."

Before him, a child sadly sings.]

It's late at night when you realize she's not the one you loved,
or anyone for that matter.
It's late at night when your mind,
a towering serpent of indecision and malnourishment,
a rushing stream of water from the broken end of a fire hydrant,
tearing through steel and ice cubes that litter a middle age class of numeral reunion,
discover the over-keyed lock where metal bends and screams.

Covered in flies and rice,
it retains its bondages, exchanging freedom for self-loathing,
*****-dying in single file,
a honey-gilded tune not thrice too soon.

I seek the corridor where my true love will wait for me,
breathing me in, yet the cane of a blindman.
A clopping corridor, sleek and cobblestone,
artificial and vast, astral.
My true embrace will be that cold one of death, knocking at my door,
pleading my friendship,
sapping from me ***** and calloused hands.

A wet kiss on the nose, a reddened tongue.

I don't know the latitude of my existence.
I can't feel the reality of my throat,
of the gushing and the breathing of winds,
blocking the eternal stream of air.
The currents broke, and from within blew a heavenly melody,
that pierced cold ears boundlessly.

Again, that same street.
Lit faintly from above and from the participants in its ritual.
They burn the wax together.
And they sink,
O paradox!
Together, with their victories of mental triumph,
they recede further into torment and inefficiency,
quantified and numerical,
arrange themselves by merit and consequence.

Again, they sink and plummet and fall,
deeper into wonder and beauty.
Until it abandons them and spills over the edges,
splattering the circumscription,
dabbing alligator skin and sunglasses.

Inspecting the damage done,
he lifts from within its belly a tattered and worn skull,
that of a Man, no less.
Rusting in the desert, alone and among his gods,
bone-dry plains and dunes of dust,
rumbling agelessly the shaken scared earth.