Anacreon’s Place

 I went insane 
would not introduce 
the call was made 
I know where she is! 
Strange solid cold 
in my chest, betrayals I have been 
sold! they are laughing at what 
a chump I am after making love 
all afternoon, thinking I am ignorant 
of their years´ long game.

Rage has gone on too long. 
I´m getting tired of this song.

            *

Bird from the flame 
ashes rain a century 
of long minutes, him immolate 
but standing still a sprite 
as flesh sloughs away.

2. 
She curses, prays, invokes. 
His shade comes before her as slain 
on a cruel pyre, and she wills anti-nomies 
to climax as the vapors 
of his unknown self condense and he 
stands before her again a living soul.

3. 
She says “I have crossed too many lifetimes 
to face this moment again without you.’ 
They breathe the moist forest air 
to muse on trials to come.

Who said I´d be 
the humanitarian 
to stroke your feathers 
or thank you for a frozen 
drop on my tongue 
when I was fevered and 
another man besides – 
sewers fester, the tower 
crumbles but we are alive 
and will follow the sparks 
of the moonrock shower out 
from the cavern, to the rainbow 
bridge.

           *

Chasing rose-bedecked copula; 
useless, fragrant it trembles. 
Forsake demented copula; 
insect defilement smears 
the hard-packed soil.

Do you understand how limited 
mind is?

           *

Manic gibber at the sacred grove; 
Flinty thighs chase spangled words to heav´n. 
Break the dream manicles with whoresome 
thrusts! Touchstone: freedom, watchword: 
hunger. Fallacy: redemption is what someone 
else does for me..

I´m not telling you this 
to get you to like me 
or to spread the refuse 
of inner collisions on 
the calm water.

I´m not writing this 
so you can understand 
the real me, or regard the 
golden ballyhoo riven 
with delight or pity.

I´m not trying to float a hat 
in the aqueduct of suspicion, 
as steel roots finger the earth. 
The ghosts embrace me, 
and we sing. Oxygen teems 
with liquorice wings. 
Every departure is symbolic, 
because spirits stay rooted, 
inside.

lightning arc of joys
that babble, become
fluid speech. You taste
the salt, brine crusts your
skin, you start to dry, you
start to heave, lie singing
gentle in the shallow water,
foam-memory tugs you,
mirrow of sorrow, angle
 of dream; 
cry melts to moan,
steam.

Flakes of Waukesha Valley 
still on the wind-shield 
after driving through the 
inferno – I will always remember 
how the slow mushroom of smoke 
and corn embers bludgeoned the night 
and scattered shadows in belated 
morning.

topmost wise her trailing 
memory – grasp the 
sorrow ab initio -she 
knows when to let go! 
sings herself again -harsh 
light on morning 
whiskey dregs but dawn 
sweet, pillars too bright 
behind dark clouds; 
she wins again! I am lost and 
found, her robes glory me, 
her thighs the foundation 
of streamlined gin; 
she rules, within.

           *

Gotta get this thing under control – 
smooth the fire flow! night is myriad oracle 
as watchers mark my breath and heartbeat 
in teaspoons and kerosine.

It is obscene how many churches I passed 
on the way into town before finding my own..

You evince pluck of renewal, 
mule carvings on sandstone beneath 
the cliffs where biting wind can´t 
get – sunrise and I´m still cracking 
stardust between my teeth when someone 
moves on the trail above; I feel the echo in 
sodden lilac air- you sang me there– 
feathers cling to altars in the golden 
city built on dunes, astonishment 
when the tower topples 
into quartzite maw.

         *

without caring 
cannot grasp a single nugget

from between the 
closing jaws of hell

          *

Pictorial discloses the clawed 
task, crayfish paints on a 
weathervane; your last memo 
was flawless and pointed me 
in the wrong direction; cups of 
supposition poured out on the 
gas grill, and they are wondering 
what that funny smell is.

I’m gouging a new ear
to hear you
   the shadow of the bullets
   I never heard personally 
are the lines I fly to 
  insensate chloroformed
pain that must have squirted
heart juice all over the curtain for what
you went through to write that stuff
and rap it.