lines from 'unruly/unholy'

memento sum mori

you're all going to die.before that happens,some advice:unleash
your skull with fermentation.grab hold of desirable bodies.
reproduce.don't forget:clothes make the manacles.

.....

encomia

personal names will be given in the old norse font.
tresspassers will be shot.
a penny enslaved is a penny burned.
destroy the world of the other then shoot them at the border.
walk tonight in your neighborhood:bring your torch.
london's burning.

.....

unholy

my enemies have joined the church.

i would be on the side of the antichrist
if i believed in the antichrist.

i'll fall in love with this pope
when he acknowledges the church
is a dress-up scam:hocus-pocus flimflam man.

your texts have interest for the folklorist & the philologist.
the rest of us would do better studying math
& music.

anyway rip,steve

we drank so much.remember that?of course
you can't,you're dead now.you've been dead
for 20 years.explains a few things,like:
why you've been so standoffish.why
i never run into you on the street
where you seduce me into a three-day drunk.
i thought of it as bacchanalian,tho
it was more construction-worker
sleaze than divine.fucking heroin
anyway.dead in the bathroom
of a chinese restaurant in tacoma,washinton.
very pnw way to go.if it wasn't for
the fucking heroin you'd probably be dead by now
anyway.rip.

unruly lines

no,in the beginning was the written word.
no oral culture could force on us
the totalizing crush of one true god.that
takes lines,ruled,copied,transmitted
by pinched men with little pointy sticks.
in the beginning was the written
word,the tyranny of text.the word
made flesh on little lambs,vellum
& a stylus & the need to tell
the wild creatures what to do.

lines from 'unruly/unholy'

i should have taken up painting.a stroke of red
on a white canvas justifies the ways of god.words
are thin air,nothing intrinsic about them,meaningful
only in a context on which none of us agree.
.....

formal quatrain

how is it possible to despise so much & still function?
dyspepsia abysmal,lying stommick coded for misery:anything
can make me stop reading a poem now,the word
'nonillion',a sly slant rhyme,the latin names of plants.

.....

things got so much worse when i quit drinking.
i've been thinking about a whiskey barrel,a keg
of hope,100 liters of forgetfulness,a tomb.sacred
wine:i assert the possibility of communion.
we can allow the legitimacy of one another's subjectivity.
we can,but we seldom do.

.....

there are voices of reason & tenderness.i know this.i
am not one of them,not through reason but through fear.
i am as filled with sorrow,hate,& the queer thoughts
of desperation as any other european.

.....

famine is not a subjective state of being.

.....

rhymey limey

the war on terror works for every mother's son.
the war on terror shuts your face.
it is a drone strike in the sun.
the war on terror can be fun!
hush now or you're one of them.
the war on terror is a scam.

.....

for the concept of satan i thank you,christian.
& for the concept of sin.
.....

the christian's inward eye removed us
from the world.the world of things,made
profane by the christian's inward eye.
.....

tree.sky.real things that are not your god.
tongue.breast.the blood inside your veins.
my god is in the world of things.

lines away from home

reading newspapers in languages i don't understand,
surrounded by strangers,my brain mushing
through undiscovered skiffs:the iron sky 
is familiar,the coffee in this fragile cup, too.

lines for berlin

cheering for hertha.hoping for the wurst.
vertigo on the ring train.wagner 
from a produce stand.the dogs 
seem arrogant,the flowers pale:
the women beautiful but cruel.

..........

i direct your attention to the air
around you.in that park
in 1933 a father's father
beaten with a club.overhead 
you see the sky.the eye of odin
looks upon you still. 

sonnet

we will go riding,you behind the wheel 
driving me,my blind eye focused on the sky.
we will motor up to mahlow & i'll wonder
why i feel alone & when i'll die.

silly thoughts.greek food & a glass of ouzo 
in the afternoon will lead me to confession
if not god.i'll stumble through a conjugation 
& i'll place a promise on your foreign tongue.

back to lichtenrade & my emails,wondering
who will write & how,if i'll ever see
my ancient enemies again.for now
we'll turn the music up & make-believe

(but it's real enough,your sturdy thighs 
near mine.your hair.this glass of wine).

lines

it is impossible to take
seriously a poem
titled 'europe:
1914-1918.' why not offer up
the quatrain 'holocaust'
or the couplet 'god and man'?

lines

a runic font on the skin of the earth.
tanning(hiding)stretched from tree to tree.
you see me in the eyes of the sky:a sacrifice.
we will burn for a day then die.

fascism

the golden dawn is here in amerika:rosy 
fingers of rosenberg's myth of the 20th cent:
fascism an old broom,most effective when it pretends 
otherwise.trumpism will survive long after 
trump has crawled into his mobster hole.covered
with dirt his little fingers will poke & pull 
at the minds of fools.europeans have alreadly learned:
don't call yourselves fascists