august 2018

                                (i)

...yes, like an unerring curse, the boa is again rising

and coiling its imperative around my mind

it is, I suppose, an essential love

a necessary, steadfast hate

this partnership between desecration and joy

this amazing dance with snakes

the interlaced tongues

the hormones licked straight out of the air

this final, desperate attempt to value the universe

to be, for just one last moment, precious to someone

it is, I suppose, love’s essence

this cry that pushes out into the vacuum

setting even tears ablaze

where everyone is committed

to dancing with snakes

to eating their own heart’s flesh

to even kissing god’s lips

it is, I suppose, the uncoiling of a curse

a naked imperative

to slowly drain the mind of all its sincerity...

                         (ii)

...the hard core of life is full of fragments

which these mirror-eyes can never see

the bits and pieces of other people

the faces within the face

the mouths inside the mouth

and the crowd’s tongue defining and contriving

the first person singular

a narrative driven by some lingering epiphany

finding, for example, love in the ripeness of an apple

and words in roots, caves and clouds

but even when we breathe the same air

the moral jigsaw remains

the conundrum of the core

of those awkward moments

when beauty is no more

and the bits and pieces of the first person

are buried deep inside the mirror’s flesh

the one, crowded place

that transforms people into junk

where tenderness is driven by obscenity

and beauty is no more...

                  (iii)

...everywhere devious, glowing chameleons

throw their storm clouds across the sun

and fists everywhere burst into flames

for the moral deceit of opulence is unstoppable

everywhere there is a seductive evil

a necessity, an obsession

to celebrate supremacy

to have the wind everywhere conscious

the oceans ashamed of truth

and even blood in denial

but, for now, there are just too many noises

everywhere rising from the floor

they are the groans of the lonely masturbators

the men and women who have stopped thinking

who have only storm clouds for eyes

who, even as they push at the last door to the universe

are seduced by their own rage

and, of course, the chameleons are ecstatic

everywhere fists now hammer the wind

and men and women leave the way they came, as strangers...