In The End

And when they come:
pod people to carry me off
and tear me up,
then all walk away, one by one,
sweet nepenthe-like
as though they'd never met,
confused, unable to get
why they'd gathered to begin with.
Just my luck:
probably not.
Ockham's razor
severed the hydra
at the trunk --
that's me in a box:
Venus de Milo
toothless, eyeless, dumb,
my limbs now stumps --
nothing but a brain
to regurgitate
its memories down to every crumb
of information and chew them like cud
until true silence comes.

Weird Science

"Chips, dips chains and whips." I'm no Kelly LeBrock of the pillowy lips. The eyes that peer from behind mine -- is there a line queued at the psychic machine which shoehorns in another's mind to feel what I feel through my skin? I am a panel rattling loose from a human Arecibo dish: an array of brains networked to link with the Ophiuchi Hotline. In the shower, under hot water I itch where wings should be and bitch at the consequences of failing Kuan Yin and Francis of Assissi.

Monsters En Route

Unclear what path I took
otherwhere and elsewhen --
today I walked Sixteenth

North of Mission and beyond.
All the while I failed
to see it. Until I die

I will remember the sky
was that precise blue and none other --
a faint smear of cloud

above the ornate cream
stucco edifice
of the basilica.

Father Serra's Indian slaves
may sometimes have made do
with the miner's lettuce

Such as that I plucked from under
bent and rusted cyclone fencing.
A forager, I ate it and saw

Pogroms -- boxcars stuffed
with Archie Bunker's bêtes noires.
Our future now pushes a shopping cart

From the Martin de Porres kitchen
to Eddy Street. Normally
I am conscious of conversations,

Of the faces who pass me
but today I saw no one,
occupied as I was

By bits of me echoing
through the singularity.
Light another snipe snapped up

From off the sidewalk.
Smoke while pondering a future
when humanity is ruled

By the shadows soon sure to
escape the event horizon.
We will become an ugly thing, then,

Feasting on our afflicted and weakest.
Fell monsters are coming
and I am Cassandra,

Braving fatal gunshots to tell
others who, like me,
were blindfolded

By the men who drive us South
past Devil's Slide
to that dead seaside town called "Perfection."

A Part of My Sum

...Or am I a smear across the eleven dimensions, a parabola described with multi-hued fingerpaint? Certainly I am too slippery to twist; I bend yet do not break. Already I have shattered uncounted times, my pile of dust showing precisely the patterns with which God colored me -- it fell in the exact size and shape He made. What a wonder it does not wash away in the rain -- obdurate as stone despite its transience...

Trannyshack, 2007

When Gilgamesh, resolute and comely,
welcomed the tumbling highball
Heklina let fly at his head,

He knew it was time to go.
"Please, please, no more diseased-hooker jokes,"
he said, "no more penicillin tune-ups.

"Let the hepatitis alphabet song
be sung by Marty Magdalen,
two-bit temple whore,

"Who's seen his share of gin and gore.
Go forth and sin a little more,
and be snappy about it."

The Overly Scrutinized SRO Shuck-&-Jive

Down from room 227
where Mary tut-tutts
hottie-tottie Sandra,
down past where a cockroach
could fuck a platypus flat-footed,

I found the tweak monster there.
He said "Beware!" as a jeweled
lure, his white, top-heavy body
arrayed in wide mirrored eyeballs,
each crowned with a frosty lash.

His stare, his glass pipe,
and a myriad harsh voices
laid me bare, this boy in a box --
profane ritual, an indeterminate
sacrifice on ice.

(It's a well-known fact that
the balancing act of observation
alters the object observed.
Less noted is the change
in the observer.)

See the downward-turned
mouth full of three rows
of sharp teeth, clacking,
"That's what you get."
He hands me my crucifix:

The passion of so-and-so,
bludgeon him with sticks
and crown his brow with thorny Choice.
When he passes by, spit,
and fix him a hit.

Penultimate

Simple as A-B-C,
it's the principle of the thing.
Razor Blade Boy saves the day
and rides a poison arrow straight

To the heart of the matter.
Who would be watching
little old me? And who
would be watching the watchers?

Quantum indeterminacy -- that damn
man in a box again.
Is he full of holes or isn't he?
Is he Archangel Michael on speed?

Or Christopher riding Eyore,
who bucks and spins and when
that morbid jack-ass
looks back he sees

a legion of bed bugs, every one
giving subtle shoves
to nudge him closer
to their reality.

Sucker punch -- the game
is a fix. Another hit
and he might remain
golden or lose a turn again.

"I like this guy. I like this guy."
"I don't like this guy anymore."
Freezer burn or Gillette -- the best
a man can get.

"Cowabunga, shazaam." "Really?"
"Yeah, really."
"Maybe, we'll see."
Great. Now put it all together.

For a day you'll be King
of the covert commandos,
an effigy to twist and burn
and unleash Armageddon.