lines written in anger at the imminent destruction of my planet

only beauty
& the tenderest
emotions give
me hope
that this
experiment
in sentience
might continue

there is no beauty
in your greed
no tenderness
in your grab
at the cloth
of green that cloaks
my land

you are a criminal
in my society
you
of the fire-spouting
arms

i will turn
away
from you
we all
will turn away
in our praise
of the poet
& the mother
& the lover
of the woods
for what
they are
& not
for what
they offer up
by way of profit
or commodity

we will be free
of the cruelty
of the choices
that you make
for us
& the only wrath
we'll feel
within our bones
will point
at you.

a poem is antimatter / manifesto

a poem is antimatter to an advertisement
a poem is antimatter to a sales pitch

the right poem can make capitalism explode

...................

this sequence of words:
a recombinant meme

...................

the word is used to sell bombs
& desire

the bodies that have burned to paste
no longer sing

a poem should be a sacred text
of tears

that speaks their story

.................

in the beginning we created the word

the word is of no import
if it does not lead to knowledge

knowledge is worthless
if it does not lead to wisdom

wisdom has no meaning
if it does not lead to love

untitled

as my vision fails the world
pixelates like japanese
pornography

eggs for eyes, cracked,
the life within cooked
to plastic yellow paste

moving through a gallery of rothko
color-fields, pieces of the world
lost to platonism

sensation remains -- the taste
of meat & milk, the warmth
of your garden on my skin

& still the sound of your voice

still

untitled

it was
air

clean
somewhere

carrying
words

to
your ear

summer song

another summer.  allergies worse
each year.  dear
persephone, you have returned.
triumph of the will
to life & all that.
i used to root for you
& your mum, the domineering
demeter.
those days are gone:
the stench of the violet
lays me low,
& i think wistfully
of hades
& the cold.

the wanderer

it is not fated that the wanderer will return.
the sinews of the coracle give way.
sometimes the wanderer disappears,
his heart-song smoothed by time

to the seagull's metronomic cry.

rape & plastic

once in a forest
where the fungus spirit spoke

we flexed our language
& lifted up new gods

we fashioned beadwork
that brought out mischief
in each other's eyes

our currency fit in our hand
a sharpened stick
a piece of bone

......................

we still live
in an actual world

but abstract languages permit
its blithe immolation

patterns of brain writhe
at separation from our other selves

our fingers now are numb
we feel nothing but
rape &
plastic

antiquated lays

the flowers of that time have bloomed & gone.
the sounds of color fade to this deaf eye.

i, an old troubadour, chant courtly lays
in recognition of an unrequited life.

the serpent was a poem

when a poem is good it's like a snake
on the page, sinews
rippling in your brain; no matter
how exotic are the markings
on its skin, it's familiar
as a myth, like the one
about the serpent
& how it tempted you to be
more
than you ever thought you ever
could have been.

Avarice & Security

sacrifice your life to Avarice
& his more tender twin Security:
they will lead you to your castle,
your community of gated souls.
you will guarantee your happiness
with medicaments & defend
what's yours with arsenals of hate
pointed at the zombies you suspect
are coming for your stuff.
but your weapons will not save you;
the threat comes from within.
your gods, insatiable, demand
all the life you have to give.
that dark night will come,
the apothecaries' potions interacting
with the canker that has eaten up
your life, & the firearm you clutch
in fear will be unto a priestly tool
of sacrifice to those twin gods,
the only ones
you ever really understood.

piece of the pie

i pray
that feminism
leads the way
to peace


but


i fear
its current incarnation
embraces full participation
in the machinery
of war

eco-tourism

not another one
about eco-
tourism.

how you exchanged
your stolen
first-world
chits
for a packaged
bungee
glimpse
of third-world
skin.  & temples.

& how you got
your ancient
asses hauled
to the summit
of a ziggurat.

& how you felt
something.

& wrote
a pome about it.

the anthologist

'poetry is a hobby,
no more important,
say,
than stamp collecting,'
the anthologist said,

droll & snark
stenciled
on the office door
of his soul.

it annoys enough
to prompt
a poem,
then,
soon forgot.

nobody
reads his anthologies
except the poets
trying
to get in them.

& they don't count.

oeuvre

a transient
in the palace
clutching mss.
of little import
save that they
are glossed
with beads of blood
from sanguine
eyes

passage

the day is turning white
like snow

at the edge of it: a light
a bright rose

it burns the mechanism
of my eye

the tracks behind me: frozen
evidence

of passage through the cold

offerings to the gods

another child sacrificed
to the six-gun
god of Freedom.
bodies stacked
like bullet points
running down the page.

the goddess Playtoy
sings her song
in rural clubs
across the land:

roly-poly acolytes
plink rat-a-tatty
games of praise.

the gods have fed
quite well this year.
huzzah for Freedom
& for Playtoy.

but like their worshipers
they hunger still,

always wanting more.

hurried love

i danced with such a pretty girl
30 years ago
in someone's living room

so many of us drugged
enchanted
waking simultaneously

it could have been
a scene
from 'dream'

someone put a record on
happy music
'you can't hurry love'

animated pagans
still high
from last night's revel

i danced
with the prettiest girl
in the room

2 months later
we were engaged
to be married

i haven't seen her
in 29
years.

actors & writers

the theater crowd had the best parties
& were the best looking.

i was good looking
but only in the writing crowd.

in the theater crowd i was like,
meh.

the theater crowd could have been chiseled
by praxiteles.

the writing crowd
played its quirks:

james joyce glasses
on a little rat moustache

a single nurtured 2-inch
whisker:

a surreal thrust from
an imagist cheek.

actors vying
for the same parts

should have been stabbing
each other with prop knives

but i saw only camaraderie
of communal art.

the writers, mired
in the dullest medium,

black scratches
on a bland page,

ideas glued together
with gobs of grammar,

hated each other
as much as they hated

the cruel art
they were stuck with,

fighting with the fervor
inherent in small-stakes games.

they despised with the potency
of pure ego.

me, too: convinced always
& not so secretly

i was the best
writer in the room.

or at least the best looking.

pomes on gods, football, fascism

gods' blood temple poems

guilt, shame

we need more guilt not less
guilt.  we need so much
guilt it is more like shame.

shame, the looting of this temple,
this perfect thin-skinned ball
of water & wind.

if there is a sacred place
in all the world it is the world
& we should know such guilt

& sorrow & shame
at its desecration
that we cannot bear

to breathe.

my communist daydream #4

i'd rather do clean work again:
roof houses.  keep the rain
off peoples' heads.  this
occupation: necessary,
filthy: braiding rhizomes
in the grass.  chew,
awaken, smash & recreate
another saner place
where i might crawl
up on a roof again &
thumbing nails in my hand
know peace.

3 short poems

this medium: a dowsing rod

words tethered to meaning
bend unreasonably
to an unknown stream

.................

that palette knife covered in words
stuck in my throat

impasto blockage of the carotid
pull it free:

a geyser splatters the page

................

blood of the lamb smeared
on the snow

ink
of damned creation

temples

i don't know if i can have a place
without a temple.
collonaded & rectilinear, classy,
with a sea-foam view---
or a deep cave smelling of god's bones,
walls slippery with the shadows of the real.
either way, i don't know
if i can have a place without a temple:
it feels like a cardboard box
beneath a bridge, disinterested men
devouring found objects
without a glance of grace.
or an inch of sin.

the gods are ready-made for plots

the gods are ready-made for plots
& plagiarisms, literary
shenanigans, substitutes for thought.
unoriginal sins of the people
& the blood they drank, etc.  no wonder
we write lazily of their ways: fantasy
shtick predating ray harryhausen
& cgi.  so easy passing on
the stories that have been passed on:
congenital disorders of the fabulists.
much harder to make sense
of the smartest apes & how they lie
with language,  wake up
with their desires & pretend
the stars are interested.