Golden Dragon Massacre

Hell: a white bowl
in shards, soup

drips to the floor.
Sun through the door.

Brown linoleum,
puddled blood.

A wisp of smoke
from a spent brass shell.

Wooden Man

Skeletal, twelve twigs
tied, strings
wrapped at the joints.

A wooden man
hangs from a tree
mottled brown

Against dark northern greenery.
He swings, catching the wind
again and again and again.

Nerves

Some unclean thing
has seen into my soul.

I am sick with it --
its many reptile faces,

Its cold, dead eye.
Its lips clap together

and his many minions
tear my body to shreds.

Bless us, oh Father,
forgive us our sins.

Give me back to the angels
though I have grown thin.

Lion In Rut

One tawny paw
massive as a child
rests velvet
on a straw-colored back.

He is in his prime.
He roars, and she submits.
It fits like a fist
in a glove.

Love on the hot savannah,
a wild rutting
and steaming meat.
A feast.

A Little Bit of Truth To It

Have you finally wearied
of the firing squad?

Whatever their excuses,
they and their bullets bore me. I look forward

To surprises for once.
People can still surprise me.

Number

A friendly face,
a warm place:
reminders of tears I've shed

At kindnesses shown me.
The bumblebee
swerves to miss flailing

arms, fat little arms
of the children we once were.
Loneliness had yet to meet us.

This winter the government
sent no checks. The line
outside St. Anthony's is alive

with hubbub and rapport.
Slop, salad and a bit of bread,
the prayer of St. Francis above the door.

Do not scorn me. You are bored
with the silence in my head.
Sit a while and let it sink in.

List

The psychopaths' campaign of lies
Aimed at the gaping hole in my side.

Mockeries of thoughts I've had.
A man's face falls. He is sad

To see what I should never know:
Scarlet droplets on blank snow.

Virtue

Erosion tells a tale
the elements forget.

Rivulets mark cracks
in the sandstone. A net

cast across rock
to catch the truth in.

The water tells lies
whose shape is sin.

Meretricious

Written for music

Another day, another holler

Another gig, another dollar

A spun out boy, the bathroom stall

My ex wrote my number on the wall

He didn't see, this boy with me

My name tagged with a Sharpie

Black writing pressed to his back

As I unzipped his pants

That's right bitch last night I got your man

Don't be a fool

Girl this'll learn you

Call me trash

I got your cash

See you sister

Hate to be rude

This little twister

Always got this attitude.

How to Capture a Firefly

for Ms. Sidney Rosenthal

The box must be built
three degrees of separation
around your target,

to whom your assistant
will speak of panopticon
and games. Go then

to that place
of the afflicted and damned.
His home will be there:

he holds hands
with those you loathe
(Was that you, straight-maned Aspasia,

camera at the ready,
when the shadow people
flitted past your subject?

Did you see them as he traced the names
of flowers his mother grew,
near your vast map with its

keyhole-shaped route
outlined in the window
of the still-gutted

office beneath the parking garage?)
Three years later
some tape remains

tacking a scrap of paper
to the glass, the only trace
left at Golden Gate and Larkin.

Now let him leave
your cupped hand
to dart about and shine that goddess light

throughout the inside
of a hollow marble bust
of Eros. Be advised

he remembers well the ride you took him on,
and could to this day remind you
what the two of you talked about.

You may just want to button him up
and never let him out.

The Marine Colonel

Shall we divide Canaan
or are we Alexander
in India, swallowed
whole by a sea of humanity?

It subsists in humid
forests, dwells there
without a thought
for our Macedonian might.

Do we slash and burn
or sink as in a sand pit?
A courtesan of the old king
spit a wrapped crack rock

At my feet when I turned
to greet her pusherman ass
at the entrance to our camp
on Leavenworth and Turk.

Fearing the Reaper

The poison arrow

pierced the veil

one too many times.

The hyenas take

you now, young man.

Will you sit and cry?

What will you? Oh,

What will you do?

Run your brain dry

While their cruel

laughter, laughter, laughter

Echoes morning, noon and night?

The Sky Today

October daylight
flows through me
a crisp meltwater
stream peppered
with leaves, brown,
orange, red and green.
The word is woman:
power transparent.
Bent mountains
dissolve under her
through eons.

Delusions of Insignificance

A gift recoiled from:
the ears of the curious
set to the door
at just the wrong time.

When my feral side
gives them a what-for,
they repeat an ancient
hatred of me.

I am garbage, trash
to my denialist audience,
who entertains itself
thinking I think to know what's in store.

Gets Kicked Only When Down

Is it all you thought it would be?
All you dreamed of?
The spider queen sits
fanning herself
in her papa-san throne
bamboo, a web of silk.
"There is nothing else here --
why do you look?"
I said you said I had to lose something.
Perhaps my self-deception
cast out of its nook.
Drop the act and be free.
See how long this took?

Game Run To Ground

Samsara to Hell
with Virgil I fell
and talked with a man
upturned headfirst in shit.
He gurgled a reply
when I asked him why
but I ignored it
to ponder my own sins instead.
Enemy in the mirror
he is jealous of you.
For three years
he marveled at what you do to you.
When at last he failed
to match your skill
he picked up a gun
and said, "Fine
I'll just kill you
and see how it's done."
Snakes in the grass
should not seek one out;
when they do,
they mimic a human shout.

Animal Sinlessness

Costume changes and consequences --
I am saved by my enemy's
lies he tells himself of me.
I correct them compulsively:
murder versus suicide,
the Ides of March
have thunder thighs
and never stop heralding
their approach.
The man-size cockroach
my charge swore
leapt out at us
hissed to disappear
behind a Cheshire grin.
Gunfire and the din
of inexpert punishment:
Am I the final teacher of insults?
The only adult
in a room filled with children?
Anguish and pain
as delectation.
Is hope writhing
in the bottom of a box
the sociopath stores his masks in?
Pandora snaps it shut and swoons --
I've yet to see a man on the moon
and too soon knew the lash
interstellar travelers in a flash
wielded; they stopped short
when this white trash done sung his tune.
How many died upon being told
that help is on the way?
"No pun intended,"
sneered the man
who put those victims
where he should have been.

Obon

It's festival day: paper
lanterns strung above
the hall. Names
are recited, children
fidget in the pews.
Oshoko, incense
and candles for those passed
on into the Pure Land.
In the kitchen, starched
ladies in madras
aprons ladle somen
into bowls.
The altar gleams with gold.
Sandalwood wafts through
the dojo as an old man
clasps his hands --
gassho. He bends
his shining bald head in prayer.

Tenderloin #4

Perhaps it's a point of pride:
the ability to look another in the eye
and say, "I am who I am,
no more and no less."

What goes before the fall?
The know-it-all boy
in t-shirt and scarf
sings a song on the brick

Pavement of the sidewalk.
A choral response from a playground
rings out through the town.
He flashes the devil's horns

And thinks, "Rock and roll."
The King in his own head
knows he rules this life
with neither scepter nor crown.

Of Songs and Sirens

Existence screams out,
the void which is not.
An echo, to silence, replies,
"You are wrong."
He totally denies
his removal from God
and says he is closer to Him.
Awareness is more grand
than the twisted place
between one and zero.
Are there infinite riches
or tombstones for muses?
A boy crowned with stag's horns
may be tamed with psychic machines --
a cylindrical brass helmet donned
pieces him back together again.
He descends into singularity.
A tiny pinprick, a splinter
of light, to flash once,
then disappear eternally.