Saturday, January 24, 2009

They hide out of sight

in the mud-slicked hollows of
corrugated slums,
snatching from the
fattened, possessive world 
whatever
can be clutched in hands 
grown old by six.
They gather in the sewers
of night, clinging to
dank walls
while above them
the adult world rolls
through the city
like a blind
armored division,
scattering fearful leavings
in its tracks but
oblivious to the scurrying
little gullets
that pinch unnoticed pieces
from it
and hoard them in the
unseen vaults
of stillborn
days to come.


Friday, January 23, 2009

It soars up

to the very foot of the
Awful and Glorious Throne
and turns away from
the sunbright Presence
to fly to Andromeda and inspect
the nether regions of its
innermost spiral, dancing
through fields of shattered
potsherds that were once
iron-bottomed worlds.
It descends into the maelstrom
of bare-nerved bloodlust,
cringing at the sight of
trembling innocents 
crushed under the
banal weight of grinning
barbarism.
Shivering with dread, it
curls up in airy dreamlands
of mercy, cradling itself
in the arms of warm-breathed
mammals, until it jumps
into the breathless
depths of desire and
lovefierce touch,
careening along the way
to a (distant?) scene
of watching the garden one last
moment, eyes brimming
with the end of a thousand
unwritten stories.

Sunday, January 18, 2009

It builds

into a silent crescendo
at the end of all beginnings,
gathering all the chains
into its ethereal hands,
pushing at the boundary
of straining, protesting possibility
until all has been swept
into its savagely beautiful
singular embrace.
It will abolish every why,
evaporate every how,
and break down the last
barriers between here
and not-here,
now and
not-now,
and I and Not-I.
The final Amen will ring out,
and it will vanish into itself,
waiting for the next
careless fluctuation
to let it roar out of the
Jack-in-the Box
once again.


Thursday, January 8, 2009

I struggle to pull myself

into that tiny little world
where delirious points of nothing
gleefully appear 
in two places at once.
They spin maniacally
as I try to grab them,
and slip through
my hands
with mocking randomness,
daring me to follow them
as they roar silently
and bounce motionlessly
off the daynight
zig zagged valley walls
of their inside-out
little universe.

Saturday, January 3, 2009

"OK, kid, it's like this",

the grizzled veteran said to the
bright-eyed neophyte
sitting in soft expectation
before him.
"You gotta dish it out hard and mean,
'cause if you don't,
they're gonna kick you where
it counts,
and you gotta get your foot in there
first.
They're gonna cut ya, see?
They're gonna try and take
your goddam head off and 
laugh about it.
They don't give a rat's ass
what happens to you, so
you gotta cave their faces in
you gotta be strong
and not look back
and not think there was
any other way
you coulda dealt with
the sonsuvbitches."
With that, the young one
rose, went over
to the battle-scarred
warrior,
kissed him softly on the forehead,
and slashed the old guy's throat
from ear to ear.
And he could have sworn,
as he turned and walked out,
that he heard a strangled voice say,
"good boy".



There were so many of them

the line stretched out
for uncounted blocks,
its members holding 
themselves
in various postures
of 
gut-shot betrayal,
vein-bulging anger,
curious bewilderment,
heart-lacerated sorrow,
or 
drowned resignation.
He tried to look
each one in the face
(if it was still visible)
and haltingly offered
his croaking, useless regrets,
sometimes cringing
in the embarrassment
of a knifebladed moment,
at others dropping his head
along with theirs, letting
the tears flow in 
twisted remembrance,
begging their pardon,
and reaching his 
well-worn hand
around their misty 
shoulders,
grabbing only air
and speaking only
in a 
monologue.

He keeps his words

dressed up in their Sunday Best,
and sends them out to proselytize 
the natives,
and yet they seem to come back
dressed in ragamuffin style,
running their happy fingers
under his chin, guffawing
rudely, and holding up
a rhinestone-edged mirror
to his noble madness.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

He felt the barely discernible

sensation of reptilian skin
being sloughed off
in sheets no longer vile
but now simply pitiable, and
a new portrait appeared to be
spreading over the palimpsest
that had seen so many 
exhausted and hesitant
previous incarnations.
Was it sunlight
creasing the indifferent
horizon to his right,
or was it an odd luminescence 
being generated from within
a self liberated at last
from childish things?