The world blinks.
The world blinks
and it is awake,
awake in the dark
beneath History’s load,
Clawing pine to splinters
as the air runs out.
apocalypse
Items of a revelatory, eschatological nature. Relating to the the irrevocable transformation of all that we take for granted.
The Poem I Will Write
The poem I will write
Will blow your fucking mind
Twenty megatons of Word
Wrapped in brown paper
And left outside your door.
The poem I will write
Will not rhyme
No matter how much you beg
And despite your wandering hand
And that low-cut dress
Which screams, “I like cheap rhyme.”
The poem I will write
Will not appease the scholars
Whose clip and judgment echo in the foyer
Of their own impending fame.
The poem I will write
Will set me free — set us all free:
The Last Poem,
Shining like the City on the Hill.
The Last Poem will be
An ignorant suicide
Note to no one
Scrawled onto scraps
The day of a death
I never saw coming.
Burnt Offering
I
The smoke from your sacrifice
Galls Heaven’s nose
Black fire grinds
Into sky
Tetrafluoromethane
Sulfur hexafluoride
plumbum
hydragyrum
Methane
CO2
Surely the god of
Your hunger’s appeased
That usurious debt
paid of Eden.
II
Cities bubble over, fat
Chokes the swamp
Your burnt offering
Stinks of a crime
Oh? Tell that to the freezing child!
Oh, tell that to the thirsty wife.
You would starve us all
for some birds.
My friend
Some day we’ll all be freezing
And for want of birds and water
Will reach for our knives
Giving Up the Green
Black leaf against the sky
Tracing arcs of abandon
No one left to see it now
No one left to wonder
Why it gave up
The green
On a hot breeze blowing
Past the husks of silos
Where the brambles whistle
Over thistle and forlorn
Little leaf is sailing
Through the broken grin
Of cities sunk in shadow
Full of cars that don’t pollute
Almost stuck in the great
Brown-green river
Oozing through empty cables
Once a bridge a mile long
It is firmly caught
In a forest of fur
Pylons like the stuff
That used to grow on cheese
The leaf is absorbed by the fungus
Staring at the sky.
And where is the mind to eulogize
This stupid leaf, vestige
Of a world gone by?
The mind is somewhere
Cause Mind can never die
But it isn’t here
It isn’t in this place
Because it gave up the green
It gave up the green
When a mind leaves a body
It goes somewhere else
But an unworthy death
Leaves the mind
Twitching like a shrimp
In the endless void
Shearing time
In Mexico a baby’s crying, crying,
In Calcutta, the cattle step and groan.
And north, off Ellesmere’s broken haunches,
Aurorae color empty ocean bone.
Tick-tock, the algae’s started blooming,
Shave a minute off the sentence handed down.
Put a staple in the ear of your beloved
So you’ll recognize her when she comes around.
Tick-tock-tick, the windows all are closing.
A flash of birds, a distant cry of goats…
Something walks among us, arms spread open.
Its bony snout is nuzzling your throat.
Waters recede
The gasping fish
The collapsing star
In countries which your children never heard of,
The outbreak starts. It shudders off its sleep.
Ten thousand years of gentle irritation:
It’s time now for the shearing of the sheep.
The many become one, and are increased by one.
Ash is in the air
All the little children are leaving.
Look around you:
the last great migration’s
begun.
There was never a promise
– no rainbow from God –
that we would die in a warm feather bed.
All the businessmen melt,
and the generals huddle.
They’re at their best when the meat
begins to boil.
A woman at the spaceport
sniffs the air and gags.
West wind is coughing pine,
the ruptured muck of forests:
grub-flesh stink and blister-singe.
Ash swarms down like hornets.
Then the asphalt heaves,
and in the whipping trees
the monkeys, pissing, howl!
at the great machines. This is
not another Ice Age.
Plant your feet – you can feel it spinning
It is the violet doorway
the vortex through the Human.
Something wafts above the stinking hordes,
survives.
As the world comes apart
Eyes gleam in darkness want to kill us
To pierce our air-conditioned haze
Our false bubble
To let the world in, sweating and congested
Fingers feel for our weakness
Always creeping back though smashed
And smashed with force
Without a center
Without remorse
The scramble to survive:
All life washing in a tide
Against the stanchions of America
Almost sinking this fragile boat
As history rages stronger
ours the sorrow
Your wars drag rust across the planet,
leave stains of oil not erased by rain.
Ours the struggle, yours the blame.
Ours the sorrow.
Now, at the sight of our bellies,
you show the wolf’s fang,
smiling concerned, almost,
stinking of saliva.
This is total war,
war on all fronts:
war that cannot win,
but only multiply.
Until all curves falter,
until the Asymptote,
when parameters break,
when sand covers the stain.
the crone
The Crone whispers in confusion
Vocoded incantations warping matter into mind
Rasping at the perished flue
The drone of history escaping
She is here, among us now
She will urge you forward
She is mouthing words of war
The beautiful undone
stochasm
meet me in the stochastic light
lasering through shepherds on that hill
flinch at the thump-crush
of fluorescent bulbs imploding
and the drone…
homing signal of lost gods
banished from these pastures
an endless hum
ripped away
now vibrates back
on the edges of our skin
homecoming
his radioactive foot on the meadow
ripples away
the best laid plans
“CLEAR THIS CHANNEL!
This is Crisis Control
and we need an empty vessel.
We gotta let the message through.”
the wilderness can absorb
all that noise
deep in you
and when you return
at last!
an empty mirror meets your gaze
now the message flows
now the badgers stop and listen
to the empty field
where daisies waving in the wind
tune in white noise