Seal this poem in a sheath of black and red lurex.
Attend a Hamar bull-jumping and seek whipping. Preserve scars in honeydew and kykeon.
Walk your familiar for at least an hour. They’ll be tired and won’t try to eat you while you sleep.
Drink a brew warm and entheogenic. Leave space in the morning to feed visions that may have spent the night.
Listen to a soft but attritional piano to wear down the centers of ennui. Satie works best.
Assemble a snack of pomegranate and snow. Shun sleet! This atrophies the gyri and leads to flower amnesia.
Arrange one’s hair into a Fresco.
Follow the pentagram of Venus through a telescope of Zeiss lenses the colour of blood.
Recline on a sofa upholstered in chintz patterns of Low's pitcher-plant.
Settle all debts in this life and the next.
Light beeswax candles and let the moths in.
Unsheathe and read this poem aloud through a conch dipped in soy paint.
Note the hour of Saturn's return.
Burn this poem.

Your wheel has spun round
and reached the apex,
the end
 of one season

ushers in the next.

I remember each time
you put on new shoes
to walk roads untrammeled
when the old you outgrew.

The luthier had strung you
a special guitar
hewn from a tree
grown 'neath the Pole Star.

Working your mojo
swift wit and sweet smile
raised dust with your feet
and Cain with your guile.

At night I still hear
your voice in my sleep
magicking then making
unblemished clouds weep.

Monarch butterflies
burned off their wings
drawn to the flames
when they heard you sing.

To the door of your chapel
virgins came round
hymens and foreskins
clustered the ground.

Will you pass by again?
Near the cohiba field
where we lit up the night
and drank till we reeled?

Then crashed on a bench
near the big house of stars
I cried while you slept
you woke feeling starved

The bench is long gone
The house is torn down
I still walk there often
though you're not around.

Don't know where you are
but I'm sure that you'll be
pursuing and loving
a woman or three.

You're destined to find
what it is that you seek;
keep following rainbows
near the loneliest creeks.

They'll lead you to places
you know you belong,
where your life will be written
and told in a song.

I used to be a scribe
scribbling other people’s lives
empty threats and recipes
grimoires rank with heresies

I used to plagiarize
esoteric tomes of ****
pawned to tabloids gorged on lies
anesthetized I was to scorn

I used a fountain pen
inkwells of forbidden ink
from excretions of hanged men
Mixed with purgatory’s stink

I used to paint with hues
of rainbows found only in hell
after showers of excrement
on sodden flatterers fell

And from pieces of the lost
torn and pulled apart
I erected a louvre
to desecrate my art

I used to be a poet, many people
didn’t know it
few cared...
fewer noticed

when I finally made them see
they saw my poems, but not me

There's beauty in this life
I cannot resist,
from the opening of flowers
to fine morning mist.

There's horror in this life
I dare not describe.
War time atrocities
through children's eyes.

There's a lot in this life
I'll never understand.
I accept the truth of this
like a stone in my hand.

Waves wash over me,
again and again.
Waves wash over me;
my stone becomes sand.

Saw a man crying on the metro today.
Tried to ignore him but couldn't pretend.

Seated next to a window
his image distorted in the glass
as if the glazier installed
a house of mirrors
in some clownish effort
to relieve commuter boredom.

Drops rolled
down a face stretched and pulled
like salt water taffy
disappearing at unnatural angles
erected to support the death mask
peering out of the mirror.

Walk over and ask him if he's okay,
then realize I’m talking to myself again.

i let him in
he is a stranger
i gave him a smoke
he gave me a hammer
he lit a match
i swung it hard
now i have cancer
and a broken arm

the top of his head
the roof of the world
spread like virus
and plastic unfurled
peeled like a caul
from my dead twin’s face;
no beasts roam here
in this desolate place

we went for a walk
i followed me home
we took out the garbage
then took out my bones
and stacked them high
in the corner with glee;
together we made
a skeleton tree.

he brought me a mirror
to prove I’m not dead
the mirror just showed me
the back of my head
i gave him paint thinner
we drank it with dinner
then laughed and laughed
and died in our bed

Spat from the molten womb of the earth
flagella streamed behind my back
whistling like a falling bomb
pronouncing death
on a petrified city.

Planting my head firmly in the sand
sleeping the sleep of stones
glacial tears overran me like fire ants

until...

awakened by a trumpeting roar
I joined the hunt.

After eating
our toothless brothers and sisters
we lifted our heads in triumph
to the sun
and watched God
fling a pebble
into our pond.

When the waters clear...

I recall being watched
then seduced.

Hundreds of emerald eyes
clouded with lust and hunger
drew me closer.

Forelegs, clasped in prayer
wrought divine intervention
which delivered me
to her raptorial embrace.

She loved me.
Then ate me.

Gripped in the vice
of her wedding vow
my head cracked between her kiss.

10,000 suns stared
unmoving,
their constellations diminished
as a descending curtain of stalactites
reduced me
to broken, wet victuals.

The rest of me followed.
I could not look away.

Piece by piece
a bizarre stone circle marking my grave
sprouted
in the belly
of my first
and last
lover.