Value
There's shape to the color in the cashier's face
dimes of silver blemish, rose gardens of blush...
Triangular birds on billboards know
Sky-barren courtyard in green leaf trim,
the blind-posturing eyes mean offense
(to the unknowable)
on the street, crests
on crowns inequitably set with blood stones
is what they can do for your soul cancer
The lion is knife-fighting his shadow
on the administrator's potted lawn
held in disposable cameras
by disposable hands.
Heavenly Woman, Heavenly Man
In our eyes
have we wintered
more or less
the mother of all
quotations we deliver
as our own
slaves we've been
release us
the over-map is burned
clear away
to the luminescent grid
its string of fruit
staring through
a ganglion of vines
eyes forget we are.
Sold IV
We had a preposterous idea
Rarer then the theology of Ra
In Nebraska that we sold
To a merchant of eclectia
And you keep asking about it,
You meaning ones in binary code
That is us showing us the math
That says if we had obtained
A patent and capitalized even
The rough shade of our idea
Ringing in your voice to the pitch
Of ecstasy a public offering
Could have made us the way
We are in the grain of black
And white sunflowering dreams
In Between The Dogma We Have These Words
He said Ephraim sounded like something to rub on your skin.
When you penetrate to that clarity is it god or the peeling away of
Set your glass down and smoke your pipe.
Put your pipe down and stand up. Those who believe this
wonder on grounds of a mode we never heard
before we wanted to sing it like it never was.
Pastoral
A wide smile enters our ken.
It comes with a set of schematics to spread out on the floor.
To connect the dots of joy's context means
what is being said between us before the flash.
As the plane flies its descent to the airfields
clocks are still talking about you -- on the hour
a skeletal version of Brother John chimes in.
You wrapped your hair in a polka dot scarf just to represent
that travel is modest and Spartan. Old school,
but I'm taking you there anyways and you're nodding
as I point out the boarded up Hawaiian grill and punk rock clubs.
Sky expands beyond power lines and buildings shrink to neighborly
If we slow down wonder bread trucks rule the atmosphere,
the day's blushed buzzard a circling grin. We forged the papers
to say we were conceived here, that the real blood harping the air
is a flayed snail inching in a flowerpot grave.
Skipping
We haven't chased this thought before
the circumference of spheres we could lasso
ourselves into skipping self-righteously
with ulterior joys on batteries for something
drastically different than this cackling asphyxia
rubbed to a vascular rouge by flash bang
of Bordeaux and alien interpretations of life
projecting diminutive thrush-like song
Roof Garden
The mothering impulse of blue sky peripheries
where horizon lingers in a glance, the known
cancelled from the seen
whether to drink or fill this cup is beside the point
stricken as we are in the light
of every door thrust open behind us.