Saturday, July 27, 2013
come home
anabel walk into the stream
the last vein of
a dying desert town,
stream of mercury and arsenic
anabel feel the pollution
of baptism, the water
melted about your legs
pregnant with a
thousand sunglinted
seasons of excrement,
filth, lillies and
held breaths,
greying blue potency
flowing around your fingertips
from the north, see
anabel, from the north
the aurora borealis boiled
ice caps steam and hiss,
from the north hear
the sound of frozen faith
dissipating, a faith in an
eternity now heaving
cancer laden death,
so look for it in the
rising little anabel
flower lean to the breaking
meagre skyskin sunsoaked
in blood painting the
baby blue gauze,
nowadays that blood light's
ever a little late in seeping
from the wound,
anabel wait for the
screeching tires, the
yelp of a dog and
in the silence
thereafter turn, turn
your face to the south,
suffocate in the song
of tribal beat vibrating
in a stagnant wind, the muted
wavelength of equatorial
genocide, the steel flashing
on the apex of a swing
headed for flesh, exhale the
smoldering of the ghettos,
breathe a rhythm of
bombs fireworking
desperation/fear/hope
up into the daylit sky, ash
snow falling upon
the machete gripped knuckles,
upon the mighty
tossing children,
the evidence, into
deafeningly deep wells
dark, neural twitching in cold
until, anabel, until
you face the falling,
the cooling, the sweating sleep
and worry that there
ain't another step you
can take to get away
from it, ain't another
step to get away from
the ever encroaching
wolf howl, the lion
stalking down from the hills.
anabel, you set sail an empty
boat to get away, to sail west,
to meet a sun that
may never come round
again, the wind at your
back a black and blue
fugitive slave
with nothing to do but turn
back to face the east
with raised fists, nothing
to do but turn back around
and leave your ship faltering,
stranded dead still
taking in the sea, taking
in the failed momentum of
an insatiable humanity,
sinking under the weight
of wasted, directionless timeflow.
so look up anabel,
the vultures are circling
in weakening thermals,
you will not get better,
the sky is draping about you
in a death gown.
oh anabel, there is no place
for you,
the seasons are
ending,
dearest anabel, release
your footing and be
flowed, carried as you are
to disintegrate again into the
gaining and the losing,
into the escaped and unbound,
into the flesh of our convict
universe fleeing
breathless and
bloodhounded neath
the moonless
night
Saturday, June 8, 2013
slowly melt us down
child you don't know
who you are
open your eyes wide
step onto the earth aspinning
into your view the
fiery dawn a warrior
blood crazed and draped of
golden red skin and a painted
face sweating silver clouds.
step into the earth, child,
it is for you.
awake from your deep resting
and see the twitching butterfly
laying on the boiling asphalt
with only one vibrant
metallic turquoise wing as
the infinite methods of death.
child you are in pieces,
come down to the clear
waters running through
the heart of the city
choked with diamond
detritus of your people's
intoxicated reality,
see the oiled duck whose
top bill has rotted off,
her tongue exposed and scabbed,
unable to catch its nourishment
as the long starvation
that will overcome you on
some quiet night
as you sleep.
child you are humbly eternal,
as the rusted train rattles heavy
and violent on the bridge
above you
see the headless corpse
of a stray dog decompose
and confetti the acidic air
around you with flies
bestomached of your infinity.
child your fabric is the
weak spiderweb of a
rogue, disheveled galaxy,
see the man pierced
upon a wooden cross begging
for mercy,
see the man walking away
from his bodhi tree
meditation, limping
towards the brothels,
in them feel your fear
of the winds prowling
about the cowered lands, carrying
with them the blackened
skies of your days.
oh child! feel us
forgetting your existence
after you ran naked and boldly
from the city for
several days into wilderness.
could you hear us, child,
hear us trying to keep
our shit together, trying to
vanquish the thought of
you lying on your back
as just another poisoned
cockroach in the cooling
desert sand,
your tired eyelids slowly
closing out the universe
once fireworked dazzling and
powerfully streaking
now silently paling
embers into the ash
snowflake drifting
down upon your
spilt bones and blood
Sunday, May 26, 2013
when it all fails
where is your heartbroken
susana to keep fresh
flowers upon your tomb,
trinidad frausto?
your lineage, frausto,
who are they to hasten
into your abandoned
cemetery to strengthen
your crumbling
headstone, layer it anew
with a vibrant torquoise
and kill again the ever
mounding fire ants?
will you not
beckon into your bosom,
frausto, the hawk
striking steeply
upon the venom snakes
coiled above your cold
concrete slab,
will you not
claw wild against the
gates of your heavens and
come back, come back
to see what your
village has come to be?
do you hear the horseless
vaquero stumbling down
the pale orange lit
alleyway, drunk and
muttering, tapping his
golden belt buckle and
wondering where things
went wrong?
only black cats now
roam the streets frausto.
the sands now are
drifting your people
away from you
into the sunset cliffs.
death here is like
the breeze now.
will you not come out
of your dark devotion
to your small stake
out in the desert plain,
come to your senile
susana's side, sip
from her mescal, kneel
beside her in front of
her saint shrine,
watch your grandchildren
dance with their young
lovers in the town plaza,
will you let this
slip farther from you, frausto?
will you rise, frausto!
will you paint your
skull gold and blood reds,
will you storm into
this town with bleached
teeth blinding
death grimaced and
as strong as when you
were laid low by time,
will you not cloak
yourself in the vibrant
cloth of starved children
swimming in the captured
wild waters,
of lovers losing
virginity in the shadows,
of the frenzy of
people trying to save
their souls?
oh, frausto, the moon
is alive once again
and she does not
see your silver bones
on the march.
frausto, she reaches
out and touches the
dust of a lily
that for so long
rested upon your aged
crumbling pillow.
frausto, through her
cataract cloud eyes
she sees your fear
from her window
shrink away into
the distance,
she sees the hawk
soaring back into the
morning rising.
Friday, May 24, 2013
no other world for your dead light
fastestar you are broken
the people of the city
are writhing in sweaty immortality
their enemies, all of your
fantastic ways to die
encamped in the surrounding
dusty hills, exhausted of ideas
they're eating up stray rats
their cunning weapons
have turned to dull stones.
fatestar you are weakened
yon child born into
a gilded bucket from
a throned, disinterested queen
squirms and wheezes
out his tuberculosis lungs
while you know
we all know
the babe needs be
to grow, to harden and callous,
to die vaingloriously
on the barren battleground
of his lover's heart.
fatestar you are the spoke now
no longer the center
fatestar you are the
hangman's rope now
no longer the old sacred oak
for no longer do
us junkies seek your
face in nebula
we seek forgetting
we seek an obliteration
tantric, excessive, careless
we scalp each other
and paint our brains
white with moonlight.
once, fatestar, once
you sent us to die
upon wooden beams
silhouetted on the burning horizon,
you trembled when
we pressed our fingertips
into the earth,
you shone your brightness
upon the decapitated
heads tumbling
down from atop our temples.
now, fatestar, now
we all look to the hills
we all see the tornado
of buzzards
vortexing above your ruination
no need to race into the desert
to find your body
no need for burying you
no need to see the fattening
death birds
pecking at the meat
of your eyelids
no need for
our hearts are become feral,
for we will burn the sky
away ourselves,
we will satiate infinite hunger
and ravage the motherly soil
into a grey, brittle lifelessness,
no need for we have robbed
you of strength and with it
we will rape and impregnate
the universe with
an eternal
impermanence
Saturday, May 11, 2013
these fading things
they sewed a lion's heart
in you, Ann, from the
get go, they sewed it
in tight and tried to keep
you in a plastic cage for years.
they gave you a label, Ann,
and tried to keep you from
knowing what there was to know.
but I saw it coming, I
knew you'd bust out.
I saw you rampage out into
the city streets and
lay low the skyscrapers,
cut them down out of
your horizon just
cos you wanted
to see everything
how it's supposed to be.
Ann, I saw when
you were leaving town
on the only bridge out.
You stopped there at the apex
and listened to a distant
train howling in the dark,
I smelled it too Ann,
the lingering reek of
carbon fumes, vaporized poison,
something so familiar,
the residual exhaust
of so many before you
that have given up, accepted
that, yes, maybe, they
weren't supposed to know
where they were really going.
But you're not just
passing through Ann,
they're keeping
something from you,
so I followed you out
of town and into the
wild desert plains,
I raced after you
until thick clouding
black covered the sky.
I came upon you laid
down, the rain catching
in your eyelashes, pooling
silver about you.
I'd hope you wouldn't fall
in love then and there
but when those clouds
cleared out, when those
ringing sunshine bells
tinctured the sound of
morning come anew with gold,
I heard those lion heart
sutures strain and rust.
I saw you go wild,
as if in these shadows
we cast you can see
our infinite genealogy
until another night disappears us,
as if all that is
hidden away from us
can be harvested out of
the winds and spun
into the hangman's rope
ever gently torqued
about our throats
as time passes
as we keep falling from
the heavens until the snap
of our necks just
before we land.
I saw you unbound
and fierce, rising
back up the rope,
a roman candle flaring
untamed and charging
into the night sprawl
above you.
Ann, I saw it all,
the molten lead stars,
the poacher's bullets
shoot you down
just before you kissed the
cheek of your destroyer.
I followed the arc
of your meteor descent.
I found you laid low
empty handed and forlorn
in a wilderness, the scavengers
hungry and on the run.
Ann, I excised your beast
heart and threw your
body into a nearby stream.
I walk back into the city,
heart in hand, listening
for the sound of
some broken thing
on the verge of
being born
Saturday, May 4, 2013
travelling in tracks
Gabby, is that you, yonder
calming your trembling
bones with cigarettes,
leaned up against the
lonely yellow light post
downtown while the
cinco de mayo tejano
beats slide from
bass strings onto the dance floor,
the trumpets vibrating the
vaquero crowds, gyrating
the seƱorita's hips.
No babe, this isn't you.
No, this couldn't be you,
Gabby, this woman sitting
in silence at your
dinner table awaiting
your man, ever late,
ever suspicious of
his whereabouts, it
couldn't be you letting
your heart go cold
in anticipation of another
night of swarming, innocuous
dreams.
No darling Gabby, this
can't be you
sitting with your soul
so quiet and still
listening to the church
ring those godawful
bells, to the rooster
crowing, the late night
freight train burning
through town, listening with
smoke leaking from your
mouth and your babies
breathing soft in their
cribs.
Gabby, dear, you're
not the one waiting for
everybody else's day
to start up,
are you?
I asked about you girl.
My oh my, they said
the moon gave you the
name of gold,
they said I could find
you between the
ripples of the stream
burning diamond bright,
so honey, you know
I dressed in my finest,
I left town with much owed,
much promised and a hope that
I won't falter with you,
wishing I won't fuck up
like the last time when you
floated off with the wind.
So dearest Gabby, I'm
miles and miles out of
town and freezing in
the desert like a shepherdless fool.
But I found you, eventually Gabby,
I found you naked
with your arms up and
bracing the stars
above you anext the
old seminole canyon
where it meets the rio grande,
where no man has been in eons.
I found you out here
in the dark staring toward all
civilization writhing and
degenerate in a cage of
electricity and concrete.
Oh girl, you know I'm burning my
clothes for us, flaming up
them old native cave paintings
to a dancing fever
cos they ain't got nothin
for us in that yonder eden,
cos babe you need to
come here anext to me,
you need to let them
heavens slip on past, let
them city blues fester
and rot where they be.
Jus acome over here honey
and keep warm
and come morning we'll
scale down these cliffsides
and slip on into the river
we'll slip on into the flow
and let the old gal
take us to where
we need to be
Friday, April 19, 2013
ode to the passing through
oh I said I could hold
your fears, I said I
could hold them in my hand
for you, I would use
my infinite strength
to keep them from your heart.
Behold this stream's might.
Behold my clenching
fist aweakening.
I am become weathered
and my weariness burns.
Unto the water I
let slip, one by one,
what you had entrusted to me.
Unto the water in increments
I let slip what you asked me to carry.
And they pool and swarm and pool
until back into your bosom
you are left with a
violent ocean for which
you have no means to tame.
Upstream the weight of
my mistakes rot above
us in the gathering clouds.
I slice a piece of my
heart, a bloody flesh
downstream I send
in desperation that it will
help stand you and ours back up tall.
Oh I said I could
bring you peace, I
said soon I will
embrace you as brother,
as sister, as myself.
Just see.
Just wait and see.
Into the spider web ether I
reach up my hand and
feel the strength,
strength enough to bond us forever
and I bring to you a fistful
of bright burning atoms.
My brothers, my sisters
I see you all stare shimmer
eyed at the sky.
I open my palm above you.
I let go the stars for you.
I let go the death shining
of a billion suns
hourglassed sands pouring.
Oh brothers, oh my
sisters, I hear
you never more.
With my dirty fingernails
I excise the last ounces
of my heart.
Upon the snow'd mountain tops
I build a fire
and upon the flames I lay
the flesh.
I watch my mistakes as
ash diaspora and flutter and settle
as an insignificant dust
all over your glassy tombs.
Oh god, I said I can
throw my light into
your wasteland
but I am become lost
and seek peace in
your darkness.
Oh enlightened, I said
I can be so still, so
unwanting in your
lotus bloom
but with my insatiable yearning
I sneak around your
gardens blooming
and plush fruitful,
leaving poison in the roots.
And, for you, I have no
heart left to give.
Oh I said to you my
love, my family, my world,
I have this for you left.
I have a fistful of cancer
black bestomached.
To you all, as my silhouetted
life stragglers walking and
burdened neath the lonely
yellow street lamps,
I have for you all the
insecticide bitterness
of my mistakes
tingling upon my tongue.
Hear them scream
Hear them yell
I will become hoarse
soon enough
soon enough I won't say a thing
and you will be free
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