“Letters to an Absent God” Accompanied by whispers of Jack Spicer poems by Christina Reed and myself, as well as chaotic piano sounds.

My reading of E.X.P.I.R.A.T.I.O.N. (MESSIÈR 83), accompanied by my own Garageband keyboard noise.

Abuiro, Abuiro

The shades draw (open)

On that flea-bitten façade:

My cynosure

Was once a home,

Misplaced.

And I was scalene now,

Lost in a birthplace

Of dust—

fossils beating beneath my skin;

In a constant battle with it,

Never stopping,

Never stopping,

But zipping myself into it

Like the dusk encloses

The cosmos.

My hands swam in abacination:

Soprano skin mimicking wormwood

Turned the words loose

Through a serpent slit halfway down to my ankle,

Falling through parachutes of lace and velvet,

They hit the mattress

as vagabonds—
never stopping,

never stopping.

When I first found this locus,

She was impoverished and butt-naked,

Withdrawing from existence,

And soaking the sheets.

Now she claims I am the scab on the concrete,

Festering disease into society:

A contagion

With fistfuls of paradigm shifts.

But I can’t forget,

Can’t relinquish

All that has led me to this curtain

Soaked in fountain ink,

Surrendering under blacklights

To obscurity and melancholia,

Marinated in daydream

By Heretic’s fork

Holding my chin up,

As I never stop testing the waters,

Too ________ to submerge.

e.x.p.i.r.a.t.i.o.n. (Messièr 83)

On a constant quest for panacea:

Withering legs running from,

Running towards

Anything disguised as a talisman,

Learned of from a harbinger

Calling from his high-horse

In a corduroy voice:

“This is it! This is it!”

But that composure handle gets hot-hot-hot-hot-TOO HOT
and your hand flies right off of it,

As each of your knuckles punches inwards

As if they were vintage typewriter keys,

Leaving crimson headlines stitched upon every blank surface,

Flashing past their innocent eyes

With a chatoyant sharpness.

Can we make it back this time?

 Can we make it back?
                                 Can we make it?
                                                          Can we?
                                                                           Can we?

Disguising your body into a crescent:

Every atom, every molecule of you

Sponged in stardust

to kiss each splintering burn

from each time the rationale handle got hot-hot-hot-hot-TOO HOT

and the meat of your palm

force feeds itself into your corkscrew mouth

sending cayenne chills radiating through.

The ephemeral concord goes through a rip-tail,

Stringing itself along by its neck

Because its e.x.p.i.r.a.t.i.o.n date

comes u.p.

 Can we

make it back

This time,

This time,

This

      Time

   ?

(In spite of ourselves)

The floor still waxes itself,

(Waiting

For Washington’s Northern Lights

To wane.)

The walls still breathe

With blanched and bleached brick walls,

Melting dried chrysanthemums

Down their stems.

The windows still sweat,

scenting our hands

with the Jetty Islands of our youth—

“Do not forget the innocence

Flourished through this domesticated incense!”

The harbinger cries again.

I ran towards him:

Smoke signaling

“This is it! This is it!”

through the carpal tunnels

in our dreams.

                                    (Can we…)

Messièr 83 was so sure:

We would only miss the future

When its kissing the blisters

on our flickering hands

because our e.x.p.i.r.a.t.i.o.n. dates

will finally be u.p.

    (But you can’t miss it, if you forget it.) 

I Cannot Contain…

Can’t you stay still?
Lotus roots are slicing themselves over

And boiling through the swift movement

Of the cracking soles on your tired feet—

The green screen-ery jets past,

And the retired portions of it

Linger like vultures

To feed on cultivating orbs

On companionship’s oars.

The windows grow arthritis along their panes

In the expected emergency states

Of the suicide state,

And we’re left in creaking rooms

With minds of broth,

Coagulating, cementing spiraled thoughts

Twisting through fissures

Like Victorian staircases

Through our waning spirits

And back down again

To your aging feet.

(The resentment surfaces)
Oh accident, accident,

the lotus didn’t mean to boil

in that volcanic salt water,

framing my skin in chartreuse,

accident, accident:
I found a robin without wings,

and fell to my knees

as the sky lowered its curtains

and the thoughts

curdled themselves

out of my earlobes and nostrils—
I cannot contain…

The robin spoke to me in Ancient Roman,

Her colossal beak moved with a grace

That kept me on my knees,

As I digested phonemes

I could never understand.

Oh accident, accident:
I didn’t mean for you to see me cry,

Or for you to see it now.

(I cannot contain…
I cannot contain…) 

Sanctum Sactorum

A never-ending desinence:
Anne Sexton looked me straight in the eyes,

As her face further wilted

Into black rose petals

With every exhale.

I danced in her dust,

Her skin perfuming mine,

Until the carbon dioxide ran out

Because I couldn’t breathe fast enough.

I was thrown into the black hole generation:

Our limbs a step too flat,

A step too sharp,

Easing into a cellulite crescendo

Hailed by saturated screams.

We all froze in midair,

Nebulas scruntinizing their necks

To kiss our eyelids.

 
SANCTUM SACTORUM!
SANCTUM SACTORUM! 

I would’ve built a better fire,

But the kindling burned like fists of memory:

falling quicker
than 

I could again stand—
My legs were out of tune!
Each bone stroked a chord in pitchfork frequency!

SANCTUM SACTORUM!
SANCTUM SACTORUM!
Temples were eaten by circus lions
in velvet collars,
and people were snowed in their homes
by freshly fallen coats of aging pages
that were now nothing but yellow snow,
every four-legged creature
and lush pissed on them for 24 hours straight. 

Anne Sexton looked disappointed…
We all laughed like cockroaches
after nuclear summers
spent under kitchen cabinets.
Survivors presented their metals
ala mode,
the Table of Elements was amputated,
because they figured nothing could be
in its purest state
as long as molecules kept acting like humans.
Even poetry was tarnished: 

the words cried out “fuck me!”

Just for reassurance purposes:

Untouched,

They meant nothing.

SANCTUM SACTORUM!
SANCTUM SACTORUM!

The Smallest Parts

Placed in place-

Bo:

Silences blister a lack of control,

Keeping daily routine caliginous,

As ingrown tendencies

fester deeper.

Desert brush brushes itself off your asbestos shoulders,

Cracking, splitting, chipping

As it cheapens itself

Beneath the weight

of balloons tied to children’s wrists

Too tightly.

Those Sodium scars burn straight through

The apples of your cheeks,

 And transient seeds

Spill out into your hands—

The left falling into catastrophe

As the right falls into fallacy,

Rippling both into

recession’s Sunday best.

You are not Helen,

You are not Antigone,

You are not Hera:

You have no root in myth or fable,

And yet you wither like currency

Each time your stitching

Fades from gold.

Why,

Why don’t you have a name,

Little one?

You remain so still,

And yet, my intestines burst

From a superfluous influx of Sodium:

Your eyes,

Are the colors of sparrows fornicating,

because you can never seem to keep yourself

dry.

You cry “Hold me!”

And every honeybee hangs itself in place,

And yet, your arms continue to blister

From silence,

As untold frailties

Fester deeper.

My little girl,

Others before me have told you

The jasmines, the bulls, the sky

were all for you—

And yet, you can see nothing but

Emerald Cities of seasalt.

Why have I kept you here,

With only fences to breathe within?

And without a roof above your golden head?

You become devoured by the hungry waves
of the forgotten—
You cannot keep yourself dry!
You cannot keep yourself dry! 

Oh my little girl,
Your bones will never shine proudly

In that mausoleum,

like you dreamed—

if I let you free,

every diamond will shatter

in melancholic symphony.

Letters to an Absent God

Is this how you painted it?

Your martyrs handling themselves

Over

To young children,

Without dying,

But with plenty of trite,

To teach things,

To push things

“The hard way.”

Making nothing but headway in clearing

The tunnels leading us

To a smoldering alcoholic spark.

Three bouquets of prosthetics later,

And it’s still the same:

You find yourself knocked off your feet,

You find yourself without anything to stand on,

As concrete melts itself

Into a Bailey’s-lime juice cocktail,

Embodying gluttony.

Tell me,

IS THIS HOW

YOU PAINTED IT?

None of us are winning,

Doing nothing but weaning

Ourselves away from you,

Turning your symbol upside-down

Into a dagger

To stab into all of the places

You could never touch.

And you,

You are not a stone

Simply because you don’t have a name,

And I,

I am not a stone

Simply because the tide makes me break:

But we will both be stoned

To immortality

And into Nosferatu’s blood-thirsty embrace

for this.

Is this how you painted it?

Impressionistic Polluck canvases,

Coating you in splatters

Of bird shit and nosebleeds,

Painting yourself right out

Of your own damn picture,

Leaving us all

Staring dumbfoundedly,

Trying to find the lusted-after Symbol

In red and white stripes.

You cannot call yourself an artist,

For each piece of work

Has created itself,

Amidst your static—

I want to hear you say

Anything but hurricanes

And mockingbird cries,

I want to hear you say

Anything but surrogate dust,

I want to hear you say:

“I’ll never be as good as I was.”

PMDF: FULL-TILT ECONOMIC 360º

postmortemdancefever:

ALL GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS

HAVE SIMULTANEOUSLY

QUIT OFFICE TO PURSUE

ALTERNATIVE CAREER PATHS

DUE TO THIS UNEXPECTED PHENOMENON:

ALL FORMS OF CURRENCY-

OF LEGAL TENDER-

HAVE EVAPORATED.

EVERY ACCOUNT HAS A BALANCE OF:

ZERO

EVERY VAULT CONTAINS NOTHING BUT

AN ECHO

EVERY POCKET AND…

The cathode ray begins to beam up my diaphragm, My ribs shifting, controlling, deleting: each bone becoming a keyboard game piece. Each part of me devolves into a pawn, Knocking into one another, Like generic Sheetrock painted with escort’s faces And governor’s genetalia. We could feel the air shake And scream out its name, But we couldn’t understand the words: Cotton ears and waxy mouths, You know you’re in trouble When the clouds have tongues— Salivating down your cheeks, Enhancing the imagery Of them melting, Mixing with the salt-licks, Attracting wild horses From states away. Shifting, deleting, controlling: Why don’t we capitalize This Scenery- So they’ll run in opposite directions next time. You shake, shake, shake, shake: Expecting an expulsion Or for someone to start crying In a gourmet fashion. And the fugued sky screams: “Rain down Reign down, REIGN DOWN, breakdown Into me: Your ribs will bloom Into a deep fried onion And that Will crown your sorry head. You, Are our king. You, Are our king!” And at that, Every electronic’s store Was flooded With expelled keyboard keys— Like Buddha’s buttons, They flew.

With Alzheimer’s Face and Polio’s Hands (No One Really Knows)

The subliminal vomit of choked-back conjunctions

and bruises that continued to brood
began to flex throughout a larynx:

The denouement surfaces,

And it is anything but evanescent,

Making me feel the weight of my eyes and hands,
As I check in and out of consciousness

Through fields of mondegreen

At the expense of Dali:

Every clock melted tonight,
call it ‘the child’s agony.’

Call yourself Clementine,
call yourself forgetting;
this is an abortion of all preconceived future,

All words ending in –ed.

Forget everything you’ve heard.

Follow yourself through gopher tunnels

Paved by talking animals the size of pinto beans,

Look at your reflection only to see the future you,

Falling into a Hollywood cliché.

Your lover looks at you, asking
“Where did you go?”

…“I don’t know, I don’t know.”

I breathe in, breathe out

Diesel gasoline,

Fueling dramatics and exaggerations.
You’re standing in front of me,

Kissing me as you look into the mirror,

The clocks are still melting
off of towel racks

And 3-week-old tissues
spewed across the floor.

No words come to mind except for the visual ones,

Gestures falling against anthills

And leaving you itching for months,

Shakes of limbs ricocheting off of ocean trenches

And sending tsunamis over Japan—
any of this could have been the end of you,

But that would’ve meant that you’d have to stop;

To kill the child in you

Before you’ve even given her a name,
pulling pigtails out of the back of your throat,

Burning at the ends.

The denouement surfaces,

And he has Alzheimer’s face

And Polio’s hands:

“No one really knows, do they?”
…“I don’t know, I don’t know.”