A Mass cursed with half breaths
Time has a bad habit of persisting
Dreads nought and
Synthetic elements tryst-ing

Manhood hunter
On tesseract railways
The day taps at the glass
Her smile so thin she breaks

Saint Drake, never
But a whisper
Seconds in psychotic quakes
I’m with her

Screaming, Lord cut the moon’s craters
Feasts of Saturnalia
A Christian cradle rocked by star lit satyrs
Hominidae, Chordata,  Angelus Mammalia
The bough broke, blood crescent in
Declination
First steps stir the Ocean of Storms
Frankincense, Myrrh,  
And Damnation
So sung are hymns, harvested lullabies,
Libations
Time, the Christ teeters as a top
Narration

Rhythm is a meter just beneath her and the seconds I’m given to smile
Wrap the morning in sunlight, guile
Our life is a scent on the wind
Of falling leaves and fireplaces, where warmth begins
Our eyes echo of the past to come
Our love , girded papilion

Irritant is
Bent intention like a moon
Undisciplined
I am just Breath
And Consequence
Of spun water
A Dance ‘til Death

The moon mentions “You have rules for me”,
laughing constantly
The crown, feathered tomes, a candlelit
Fisher King
Her waltz wanders eyes; War headdress,
Rosemary spice
elect
her neck espousing
Grouse, minerals streaming
My sister posts ambulance ride selfies
WIth a loosened insistence on eternity
Hamearis Lucina, or ‘Duchess of Burgundy’

Alcohol dries my heart to the bone
Calcium score of lunar dust
No rhythm, words like stone
Set on the mantle; the earth’s crust
Bones build constellations
Their names run beneath
Archangels grant damnation
My lungs beat without relief

What dreams here untested by
Ganymede, circling; apprised
Judas, freckled skin;  the cries
Reconstructing childhood
From the tides
Ferris wheel
The skeleton of a pier
I am 13, 27; I am forty four
Alive

The Jesuit and
A party as clean as the afterlife
And no people
Just new music
Ritalin rain, tulip petals
Imagine they discover imagination on
The far side of words
All faces become familiar
Tenants of our Temple

The sunlight, a departed friend
The lamp light;
Autumn’s condemned

Ariel ruins, the left foot to lead the dance
Spiral, laughter; the endless
Chance
Water crests, the deck boards ache
And the jawlines clinch
Death will have to wait

The doom of the marsh,
Of conversations,
consonants keying the walls
The trickling, like stroked water
Delicately balancing history
Atop The Dream of Money
Enough to not feel
Not to reel
From the chokers, the faucet
The bloodlet

Shadows craft the bus
Shuffle the feet inside
Earmark the conversations
Earth barrel rolls beside
******* minds, mining
The rhymes
Of heartbeat and tide
And isotopes; and pride
Salesmen; teachers; Union Carbide

A butterfly of cells
Mexican coffee
Distending tephra in cascading reds
Above Chikurachki
“Sip from this side of the café”
The tick tock of Cesium 133
Who imagines eternity?
My left eye’s infected
My Youth, neglected
Malnourished to older age
Like Titan’s dance: a slow degrade

Torched with acetelyne
The conversation shivers with caffeine
As comets snap at the human dream
“Everything”, she says, “is manufactured mean”

Rotator cuff strung across tea leaves,
Or “Spring”
Knights the Dream with
Letters conscript
To brandish, burnish sleepy drifts
With tinsel brass tunings and wit
In the key of youth
Diluted
With whiskey rye; bell jars; vermouth
The brute is
Bell’s Palsy comping white thighs
And salt air choking the night

Retrograde Monday
Irregular conversation; distressed axis
Sunlight riveting autumn leaves
Dance out of step, distract us
Shaky shapes of the holy mother
Church lips; sin-tinted sigh
Only a God could love her
Hedyloidea: a caught butterfly
Of Slink, sinew, childhood rhymes
Hers a pressed smile, run by Time
The Stations await, the cattle call
Shuffle on soot planet, entrails et al

Imagine they never said anything,
The Memories:  the eyes, the fingertips
Imagine it was dreamt, desired;
Rescued fear from sunlit lips

I counter you, Moon
Lazy, warrantless, worthless jewel
I dare you to continue
Whipped, blind calcite mule

Eddys froth in mindbenders
Heated, gesticulating words
So grow the devilish
So shadows herd

My standing is unranked
I chip parcels of meat from the ****
I form, I reticule, I eviscerate
From the highest hopes, I jump

Fury, fury and birthing nothing
Empty arms, silly songs, Eyes
Alight for muscle, touching
Bird chirp pleasantries
Sir, church, Momma, please
Landlocked disease

Why must you look toward
Forward?
Waif, figurine
Roller motion
The notion that you
Clink when kissed

The old wanderer, resuscitating
Time, the sunlight
An impure wine
Wrestling Anger, the Fight
Missing you, Neptune
Like childhood

Some right some new
grew cavalry
I do not have a heavy foot of gravity
To plight climate with money,  breeds
leave the glass buildings for idols and Thieves
let the spurn of my childhood taste like ***
and mint leaves
The sun never excuses its insolentry
I guess for death sins that never leave
All my sister, her rhymes
That enlist her

S O L  I  T A R Y

It was a downward trajectory
Like poetry
Sifting the salt from the universe
Forging the faces of her and me
Adrenaline bands, the Kuiper belt
Argonaut planets beginning to melt
The atmosphere, our feathered slip
My sister’s tired, losing her grip

I N ST I T U T IO N

My grandmother’s hands twitching,
Neglected
Winds, they anticipate interaction
The elected
Words they carry
Like Vericose, Pulmonary
She’s scared, these
Hours... they mean more presently
Not patty cake or finger paint
But moons of Jupiter, Saints
Relax, the next breath awaits
I miss your Angel Food Cake
And my bare feet in your creek
And scooping crawddaddies

The great lung stirs us
Small hands shaking rocks
Let the rhythm distill us
Beneath waves that froc

Hunters, smiling
Hone spear heads with granite
And gunpowder; and artillery
Dear God, why give us a planet

How to build a boat from tree
How to leave the sands
How to turn the oars, free
The great lung, of clouds, demands

Some narrow lilac, some feathered breath
some moment tread over with daylight,
with stamped cigarettes
The secret sanct of poets, intersect,  
*Sunset’s mother, cradling loosened
dandelions,
like Europa, sulfur ingénue,  hand woven clouds, tapestry *
I climb axe in hand like God’s mistake,
my dancing planet’s sands soaking wet
Time mishandling regret, respirations,
and Whiskey just takes and takes.

The universe addresses its skeleton
Tidal light reinvents her, beginning with the lips
Gravity pulls at the word: civilization
Reeds in the water kiss my fingertips
Night plays with rancor, bad blood
Newborns shiver between bristling thrush
She coos, her words new; scripture
Cocktails misspending memory in a rush

Stargazer fish, of tactile scope, a firm apparatus of sullen sail
taking on watercrest and nests in song,
in rivaling storyboards hoping children read along
of the pirate’s appendage, the moonlight, the claim rights
every night cries for a villaness to bombard
plunder,
scuttling poetry under
foamy humpback water melted from night sky,
arriving in tides named for our stride

Gin soaked parchment paper, robbed of  words
wrung red from split fingernails guiding,
sliding back and fro
to the irrhythm of distended lobes misfiring  
a useless tome, of uninteresting characters
and the sun that burns them crisp, their lips tiring
cigarettes in the candy dish
the southerners, wrenching wrists about their red clay alleys,
the tinted beer glass stashing tobacco juice  
their words playing loose with the sanctimony of animals, raccoon paws
and muskodine snaps and the rusting 1953 Crosley metal lawn chair
rocking away the synapse.

Some summers writhe beneath me,
the skin stretched across the petri
kept away in the ribcage, beating against the bars,
Wanting stars,
the ether burned off as sand staunching my toesteps
and Saturn rings tossed afar

Stargazer fish, of tactile scope,
a firm apparatus of sullen sail taking on watercrest
and nests in song,
in rivaling storyboards hoping children read along
of the pirate’s appendage - the moonlight, the claim rights
and every night cries for a villainess
to war the heart,
bombards and the plunder,
scuttling poetry under foamy humpback water
melted from night sky,
arriving in tides named for our stride

Machine-learning people, memory blossoms of consonants
Walking all on their own
Like the ants on the pebbles their grub held above their eyes
The surprise is that they Know at all

And their Death is an alabaster tea
Or singed teeth greasing the universal works
Swimming beneath rumpled covers of earth
To be Memory,
blossoming petals
and me

The common blow fly, the
Adults, feeding off nectar and
Animal carcasses
All Forensic protozoa
Owing their
Fine structure of mid-gut
Epithelium to an alchemic
Grand Master,
Razing his glass knife
across alabaster and
buffer acetones as
These  larval Celestials
Intone
As gendarmes of Cyrus and
Cassaiopeia vibrating
The metronome
Honed with memory,
In my ear
All of it History

Tumble quasar roaring blind, caustic stick etchings of candle wicks
carving starlight into unkind creatures
Clawed, aligned
Rivulets between the rivets, precession,
Your star, Our star the finger of another constellation
Advising wayward comets to deflection
I watch tadpoles in the pool
Swim a spherical galaxy
Sun and the earth and the moon alive
Deciding
That gravity is company

The sing song of a child
Aghast face making
Wretch, guard, gild, hone, smelt, style
The seasons snapping our backs, wild

A love affair with God
Bodies old as cast wax
Stuffed with junipers, natron
The future I regret; my past I laud

And then it broke, the world
Into sunlight and clover leaves
It was all just sounds anyway
Nothing gravity could ever keep

Minstrels were the first to sing
And orange hues deconstruct Spring
Sentences are wrung of time
Wish I’d kept the promises of mine

Dilemma, the cerebral antebellum
The wrist flicked rhythm of the swamps
And the candlelit manors
Perched as tethered yachts atop the rim
Between twilight and dawn, awaiting the archetypal,
Cantilevered, alabaster shadows
Reckoning hatred with nature and burning the hallowed.  
Guests siphon pictures and survivors win registry
As History forgets to tell the sun and moon
Of their responsibility

We wish for words to work with us
to enter and leave as we believe all religioins are
And touch and taste are never disappointed
and the weather is always October

I Love for love to liven the colors of conversations to
bright red and crinkling silver
and tomes of poetry are hand delivered to the bored.  
Toys are no longer just for children
and everyone prefers candlelight to cinema
and Time finally admits its accompliceship to God.  

I weather words well for a kettle *** rung with flavored tongue.

Hey, Malaise.  
Perhaps a comfortable walk?  
A conversive stroll tolling my attention;
a religion, aren’t i?

Welded 7 tomes and wrapped sacrament paper about the very thing; Somer tomes,
soldered to sacrifice and daylight running as
mercury off of adam’s bones honed to a south American river peak; Invenerate mammalia rollicking atop
she shocked herself to see another sun light in the blinds.;  
He mended caverns and she hung across them, strung out.

When you know too much
When you name the wind
God takes a limb
And carves His name in

You Breathe Too Much
He says and sings
The seasons ever faster
Spring so unrelenting

Cannibals ate
What they could not whittle
And your death bed warms
To His unnerving riddle

And your memory, no
What was I for?
To barter flesh and bone
And ever He took more

Our alabaster skeletons,
our framework of ancient spires
arching to the heavens and
hung with multicolored glass
sunlight pours through as visitors gasp
and kneel and besmirch and knock over
Muscadine,
the Eucharist and Time.

Celestial bodies speak
Just Gravity, Time
And Catastrophe
Their soot sopping skies
And mixing with our skin
I jump up from the earth
And join in

Some sack ration
Basted, Nation
Clicking limbs
Seraphim
The bow swung low across the strings
Heaven was created with memory
Jesuit chanting; hymnals ripped and
Hung beneath His fingertips
Queasy Art; Wrecked hands
Seminal beats and terminland
Catch the sokoreal
Spawning chests
caelestis, heartbeats; the first sunset

And there are fountains
And balloons and taffeta
And baseball and popcorn
And your legs and head
In your father’s arms
As you are carried to bed

And you are not afraid of that mistress, Death
And you can close your eyes
Because they will open
And you can dream
Because you will wake
And you can fall and cry
As Memory nests inside
The immaculate life that waits

Anteloping arms, grappling smiles
Errors of houses arranged alphabetically
The breaded butter, the backbones
Of traditional garland, alit with bulbs,
Collapsing tinsel and tin harmonies
A belated world, buffeted with meat
Lacqured in liquors, merriness gay
Flipping shadows about the streets
Holiday

***** hysteria
Limp along consonants
Ladder up the laughter
Falling down repairs
Disingenuous social party -
Razor thin grins and
Tightly-woven stares

Wave at the waste
Wavering gasps, the pain
Hip and wrists dissolving
Dance, their words in vain
A Princess-cut moon
An encrusted crown
Colors eyes blue
And I drown

****-tails

Slider, this
Cellular vestibule
Pink-yellow capillarium
**** sack, wretched thump sump
Stuffed with sauce and rind
“I was always meant to go”
He said on the way out of his mind
The *** Runner and his misbehaving
Alchemy, of blood stunted
By the soot of
Planetary catastrophe

Beans and melons
He sung
He rung
From strumming chords
The bar, our Lord
Gravel on chalkboard
Verse by Verse
Whetting the appetites
Of the universe
Candlelit darkness
Our first and last quilt
Wrap me drunkenly
And so my will

Neither a thought nor a child breaks loose
here, in the Elysium of the brain unbridled, blind, mute
and dreaming of nuclear landscapes.
Her careful walk cradled what was now his life,
the morning curdled with sand-whipped sunlight
and perfect whiskey sours
he devoured
as if Time’s rhythm relied upon them.

The undone bloodline of humans
Recycled gravity and howls
Battering obscurities
Reticulating vowels
Chimps and Teachers
Holy Spirit and Guns
Our slumping backs erode
And the sun is the sun

Let’s say the sun is yours, he said.  
What difference does it make?
Have another ****-tail.
And the sun scrubs what it creates

The oils and the ethers in little crystal bottles
both round and ovlong and colored yellow-red and dill  
They clink between her fingers as she peers
over the edge of the tripping little pill.

A million little poems explaining us from then to here

What but bells sound the universe
The toll of time unwrapping verse
The sentient smells of alit glory
The sun of man reveling Story
The card houses with clapboard feet
The candlelit favors indiscreet
The archangels, hair unfurled
The manors of war; the avenues curled

Lessons eyed blind the mind -
Shutter the daylight; leave the saints
Those freed from earth
Their voices faint
Adrift as the last boat
Sighing with the tides
Into the depths of midnight
We’ll glide, glide, glide

Slider, this
Cellular vestibule
Pink yellow capillarium
**** sack, wretched thump sump
Stuffed with sauce and rind
“I was always meant to go”
He said on the way out of his mind
The *** Runner and his misbehaving
Alchemy, of blood stunted
With the black soot of
Planetary catastrophe

So pumps the crimson, so it curdles the sleep in us all
The vacuum of souls so like their universe
One note, one verse
Ad infinitum sung, no … hummed
Until the eyes darken and the skin loosens and the
Teeth yellow and drop from the gums
Blood thickens with Weary, with boredom of Springs and Fall
Every word the same, every face known,
Every day a rhyme
Ether to amber to stone
Fruit cake and peppermints
Candlelit stockings the children
Swat at
Christmas syllables, sentiment
Sung until the liquor melts
Candy canes and magenta leaves
And the sleep
And tinsel trees