My thoughts are crabbed and sallow,
My tears like vinegar,
Or the bitter blinking yellow
Of an acetic star.

Tonight the caustic wind, love,
Gossips late and soon,
And I wear the wry-faced pucker of
The sour lemon moon.

While like an early summer plum,
Puny, green, and ****,
Droops upon its wizened stem
My lean, unripened heart.

when I awaken
I extend my finger
towards a panel of dancing light-

did you know that its veins were torn from a mountain?

a whole hierarchy of angels
living inside the earth
were turned to transistors

so that my letters
could glow in your hands.

when I learned this
I began sleeping beside a stream,

in the places where I could watch
wires dance-

beneath wooden pillars and their flimsy black arms
whispering secrets in permanent embrace.

every night I would dream  
to the forward noise
of churning water;

of fluid drifting through the air unseen
or pouring from life long past-

terraforming
for the maintenance of symmetry.

questions undue
stuffed folly into the throats
of mathematicians, priests, and poets alike.

i nearly burnt all of their books,

but a paper boy with wide eyes greeted me at seven o’clock on sunday

and untied a parcel
with careful young hands.

i saw his legs shake
and thought yes,

god is tension;
a string
with both its ends pulled.

4 A.M My Lai;

in the lowlight
colors move off my skin at different speeds-

i’ll smear them into filth,
a vignette
plastered and permanent,

and beg
for my face to be scanned like a barcode.

If everything is political
I suppose I’ll distance myself
from everything;

I’ll go back
to become rapt
with Eleusinian mystery,
and begin dancing among
pillars and fluted blocks
at the propylæa-
suitless and light.

The pattering of peoples steps
was the only music
I ever wanted to hear
anyways.

a lone showman amidst a crowd
stands raised on a pedestal;
he wears a hat,
its brim is lined with bells,
and on the top rests a newly bursting lily-fibrous stalks of nescient life
intertwining with felt and chime alike.  

raising high his flowered cap
he remorsefully disclaims
“you once ate the sun!”
but these words are ignored.
the crude ringing of the chimes
is the only sound that brings applause.

the harmless introduction,
of a new figure
carelessly unwinding
a knot stuck deep inside a dip (sulcus)

marbled eyes
scrunching in
amused perplexity and
intrigue,
a face filled with
intermingling shades
of ochre and wood

an ache to make a medley...
a macédoine