Solomon rides his chariot of fire
the sun, sky-high and singular, eyeing
his war waged in the dirt
with ant soldiers carrying banners
of men who trade blows for love

patrilineally doth the crown fall down
tumbling from head to head
'til two heads beheaded are consulted
as double-minded words of wisdom
make the world spin like unwise heads of state

molecular clock ticks and talks until
the ancestors come unglued
and the ancestry unravels into
yarns of pride and dying for
tales of glory, written only in blood

prehistoric fathers sacrifice daughters
before the mothers could file complaint
of double-edged swords in the house
where Hammurabi's word in etched in stonewalls
but falls on deaf, stone-hearted heroes

deforestation dreams destroy wooden wands
and depeople dozens of homes; magic gone
the holocaust costs more than halos and crowns
'cause caustic causes contrived by the man
make the world burn twice over

and there's only so many do-overs 'til it's truly over

exsanguinate the surrogate
splinter the soul-bones
and work with it
needle-nosedive into fretful
twitching and switching severance
for fours in swords inverted
serving the Devil with the words
required to birth dark squirms
burrowed in womb-pores

pours out like death-herds
dread sires and banshee curs
cutting the air with knives
meant for draining knaves
walking through the woods
in waking nightmares untouched
by skies and sun and fires burn
in furnaces composed of sores

scores of men and their biological processes
spill terror into the streets of dawn
ringing the bell with the hammer
spreading the cure with corpse dust
carried in coffins made of stone
engraved with chasm-rune ruination incantations
deeply echoing with horror and doom
but they press on through the throng and windows

organize the organisms in your mind
then let them slip through the gray matter columns
slick with poison thoughts and psyche slough
muggy and mushy and oh so ugly it hurts
making morose musically intoned implorations
temptation is drinkable brain dew
that's best sweetened with salt from the womb

life from that tomb reduces all in its path
relaxing the children into wrath-ringed halo teeth-
chattering torture boxes maintained by the state
of uncertainty we knew and do in the dark
behind closed doors to knock out the cork in the floor
and drain down the rumors of war
and the failed diplomatic drug legislation
instigated by poor boy and girl peoples

this physical form cannot keep concluding
the world inside is made of door-wood forests
where the corners contain everything imagined
and the scene is imagic and spelled
u c now how it works here?
because I don't

cannot identify my identity
cannot conform to society-symmetry
try as I might I cannot die on three
or four swords inverted by
the Devil's hands of cards
holding the keys to card-house horrors
locked in the tomb of the womb
where demons assemble more
and hell breeds its herd
so we all can converge in bloodbath...

Babel-rapped righteous words worked into hurting ourselves

crystally sharp
in clarity
azure and opally
bright with so many
hundred hues and mirth
twinkling fiercer than
the fire in the earth

and to hold in hand
that so ephemerial
essence of life
as known through lens
childlike and purer
than the world
at its burgeoning

time is liquid
flowing through it
and feeling like
seven thousand voices
ringing with heaven's
lightning gaze incarnate
in the words we speak
when no one listens

fully detached

released of inarticulate
yearnings
desperate and disparate
each a golden claw
a pale tendril
reaching, but now driven
from my lands and I

kingdom shouts and
kingdom cries
and on my ramparts
the mourning dies
and I aspire to greater heights
in spires
inspired
effervescent, sanguine
devilry

and I, the devil king
do degree my fellows scorned
my love, retracted
my kinship dethroned by
kingship
and sequestered away
in spires of delay
I belay the order to
sink
the ships have sailed

I burned the bridges
when I got to them
each different one
kindling for funfire
popping with the excited
stardom of one
myself

and in myself I lie
inprisoned
in dungeons far too deep
to wish in vain
it's in my veins
in vein of bloated volition
ruptured

overflowing with
god-spurned
self-destruction proverbs

"what is anything if not its parts?"

crumble
stumble
shin bones resonate
then part ways
walking razor edges
in descent to
the underworld

so sink I
under the waves
of Gaia's fury
roiling through my veins
overflowing, spilling
pouring out my
drunken offering
in shame

descent
deeper--center
subsumed in doom
saturated with ultrablue
blood not mine
penal lineage incongruous
with divine

my sole salvation
is empty
my soul empties into
Tartarian depths
and definitively
denied access to
heaven and hell
I'll sleep with the
vacuum
sealed, entombed

forever frozen crystalline carcass

fragile as an egg
I crack my skull over the page
and astral project my discontent
in order to witness my disconnect

the black oozes out
and takes its sweet time
to reach for the sheets
of paper to rhyme
my disillusionment
with suffering not mine
it speaks to me
all of the time

grasping the page
black eases in
to fill the void again
in vain attempt to connect
the patterns perceived
by my hand-selected memories

filed all orderly
they spill out in a heap
and soak in paper-deep
it's not enough
and it will never be enough
but blood must be spilled
in order to keep
my gods alive

they wane with the tides
sanguine and weak
I give all I have
but it rarely seems
to have an effect other than
a brief reprieve
for myself
it doesn't help
or decrease
their suffering...

so I weave words together
to spellbind the weather
from washing away
all I've worked to achieve
and perceive with augury
and sorcery and poetry
all scratched in the earth
so the world might hear me

vocalizations and invocations
fail to sway the rocks--
stone-faced, anthropomorphic rocks
--that just stare at me
secretly laughing
they're happy
their suffering

my gods are dying!
and I'm trying
to find a cure
but it isn't working
and more and more
I'm sure that

a congregation of one is not enough

I can call upon myself
but it's just a shell

bones break surface
offering quilltips
for forging poems
with
graduated cylinder-strained
diluted-air grade
not from concentrate
ink

the mechanism's safe
as sealed secret tombs
are safe
an echo of disdain
for which I apologize

aquiver with paste-
like listenings
replicating histories
foreign and estranged
to taciturn gaze;
functional, but
glazed

shells function as people
but not as well
words wish but don't tell
what awaits ingrained
in bones broken
for blessing

pop! but distressing
echoing, echoing
pain empathetically parsed
but cannot relate
it's too late

I'm walking
but not talking
I'm listening
but not communicating
I'm dead
but not yet down

entombed in my head;
all that might have been
still can, but
a refusal to bend
is found
in my own pen

I've built a prison for myself