Frankenstein

Just before the rubbing out of function
the movies are monster green with value
or with comfort like grass in a memory
on a hill infested with ants, subterranean.
globes to make meat from fingers touching
dollar bills and a photo of me as a child

mapping me a chronicle to imitate the child
of the gardener, that knight, who functions
with his organ of poison, crumpling to the touch
of the sun. Feet are currents that resist the value
of water, a pair of shoes to a subterranean
proverb. Exclude the sun’s memory.

Exclude carelessness and favor the memory,
the one law of the interminably protected child
in a chemical shower, subterranean
prayer wheel. Set the eye to function
an undermining execution of value,
blessed misdirection in the feathery touch

of an eye. Spin the random indicator to touch
the cut of fascism or other recent renegade memories
of circumcisions, other happinesses devalued.
I will follow the yellow moon until a child
is eaten by the viper in a mechanical function
of digestion, an un-inherited subterranean

legless shudder, passing a batch of subterranean
darkness, the kind you might touch
only because you have no functioning
sense of decency, no choice or memory,
monster who crack-tooth gnaws the child
out of me. Because there is no other value

this side of death’s river, I can’t value
my twig emotion no matter how subterranean
the demon factory hovers, touching
the mists, the thump-a-thump of a child
playing cars, by and by. I’m touching
the barrier of fog burning the memory
of saints on fire, slipping in to dysfunction.

Noose, function of burning tides, hacking
value, the subterranean touch of a child’s
lumps, is memory become factory, given up.

Zombie Movie

Either I’m a people in a world of zombies
or a zombie in a world of people, either
that or I’m in a movie that takes place,
in order to show what kind of thinking
goes on in a zombie’s head as he tries to eat
the person who is mistakenly hiding

in a pickup which is not a bad place to hide
except it died halfway between zombies
and safety which is when they finally eat
their way through to the credits. Either
that or it’s an illusion, and I am only thinking
of safety which is, in the end, a place

where zombies and their thinking replace
notions of getaways and trying to hide
in the right place so as not to be thinking
of anything when you go in to see this zombie
movie which will be so full of either
gore or squirming you wont be able to eat

the popcorn you got because you forgot to eat,
and which look like brains now in place
of popcorn but that doesn’t bother you either
because there is a human concern hiding
that churns deep and rubbery in the zombie
as he shambles in his bloodied suit, thinking

about how he will get you even as you think
you’ll get out of the theater and eat
some real dinner, somewhere real zombies
wouldn’t even consider like a sushi place
not fast food where the maggots are hiding
disease that turns you grunting either

to a cloud of gas, huffing putrid ether,
or just a shabby business man who thinks
he’ll make it if he tucks in his bowels, hides
the puddles and turns down the urge to eat
his neighbor, while that stain formed in his place
calls the mantra of the shopping mall zombies:

either you hide in your place or the zombies
will eat you. More importantly, do you think
they validate? Validate? Validate.

Buzz Buzz Beelzebub

Witches chalk circle fails to detect
the dark lord’s insect passing over me,
evacuee of time. Instead I sing
homilies in pulped language, fragment
of my eye, the witness insists I nail
down the furniture god carved of serpents,

electric like the ocean used to be, a serpent
who probed with squeezing to detect
the winds of an epic thought naturally nailed
to my mouth, sucking, as it were, me
into delicious intention while the fragments
watched the centuries jaundice and sang

that captive prayer the belted criminals sing
at inquests. And yet you deny the serpent
who wallows for the sake of it, deny fragments
intruded and by the supreme inquisitor detected
my lies that burn, oh heaven save me,
like insects inserted in my relation like nails,

buttery up-drift, profile, garlic and snails
who with marble in their columns sing
through their nostrils songs that watch me
twist and squeeze the alter like a serpent
the good priest put his hand down and detected
squeezing my heart out into fragments

like pomegranate pulp, teeth, fragments
of bone. How he wishes to collect me, nail
me back together. I say use a metal detector
to sweep the dirt and shit until it sings
of the jointed beams that ride as two serpents
together like shoulders carrying me

into the country, setting the stake, burning me.
I am pages in the book of curses, fragments
from the garden, hiss of the condemned serpent
spreading a foliage of light, dressing with nails
the green, an avian sound resonant, sings
advent of wings, flap insipid detector

keeps the serpents in the chalk circle so we
can nail them down and cut their tails into
fragments. Singing shivers, they devour me.

Apotheosis

**






The nails are in search of a man to make
not a god, but a Tonka toy inspired
by track star haircuts leaned in from shaving,
milk wash like flesh over Formica until
it’s transparent. All art should be smooth.
Two handed but concrete soft, like in a dream.

Read the air. Not god but deception dreamed
this bomb. Not juice but horizons made
this confirmation of madness secret-smooth.
Print outs of not god but robot inspired
insects. The carnival secretes a visit until
I dissipate like a sink full of shaving

cream, a cake covered in chocolate shavings
radiating out in ripples like a dream
of denuded faces cutting density until
the lord uncorks in a wild fiasco made
for the people in the dunking stand, inspired
by the amoebas all over the smooth

carpet. I am almost never smooth
no matter how much combing and shaving
I can’t quite get the ladies inspired
to stitch their pulsing cages to my dream
or to climb through pressure and make
that noise that heats the room until

the wallpaper droops, or at least until
I convalesce in wheezy flame and smooth
the sheets. Involuntarily I make
the folds of a chair ration out the shaving
light between hard stomachs in a dream
in which I am almost nearly inspired

to give in and fall down the stair well spire,
to turn within the hospital parking garage until
there is nothing but fried ampersands, dreams
of grease & gravy, secretions holy-smooth
where I am the prisoner desperately shaving
a gun out of innocence or whatever I can make.

I’ll inspire you with a ring made of wax,
shave a little time off my dream until it is smooth
and hairless and ready to be holy, holy.









**


**

Devotee

*




The drain is a circle of eyes blinking back
the remnants of my shame. They investigate
so enormously as we dredge facile fact-bombs.
I am pierced in rows by a scientific fetish
and they labor in the Chrysanthemum-bulge
I cornered with the dogs to show you
I meant the best for your toad appendages.

Samples of decay threaded with appendages
like fingers and off-road tread leading back
to nightly deranges, how a house-fire bulges
with gowns of sound clawing to investigate
consciousness, the wet earth her scarlet fetish
prehensile projects from the tonsil her hope-bombs

the names withdrawing to canvass, bombed
to tombstone, all-terrain scrambled appendage,
time-balls; in with the oils like a candy fetish
in a dead rat’s mouth on the pestilent back
highway, where exterminators investigate
how long the carcasses make circus bulges

like bags of microwave popcorn bulge
from radiation, little roadside bombs
machine moved and glass investigated
by the machete who wants your appendage
removed from hero view, pruned back
along the historic landscape, that fetish

made turgid by hairs that tingle, that fetish
how your sting makes me welt, bulge
like the curve bones showing in your back
your heart beats away the dark with bomb
shakes, sprouts my prayer box to appendages
and the doctor splints, squints to investigate

how the trauma victim invests in closed gates
hedges of sheep, pink and wire fenced fetish
precision, with wild swinging appendages
that dance at the end of broken flower bulges,
like fields of gazing sunflowers carefully bomb
cut and gathered with hands to give back.

Thus the gentle caressing bomb of highway accident
is like the fetish for a missing appendage,
a bulge in your shirt worth investigating.



**




* *

Darwin's Wren

Today my school had a special lecture on Darwin
which the public thought might raise a stink
with those who disagree with Moses and evolution.
Some on the faculty called for the creation
of a committee which would have a Wren
as its logo and could be seen from the walk

if you didn’t drive and chose instead to walk
which is how on the Galapagos Darwin
got around, spotting those big beaked wrens
and trudging through the waste and stink
of giant turtles who by their own creation
nest in sand bowls the product of evolutions

of flipper tosses and waddling revolutions
and romantic turtle starry night walks
on the theoretical beach, humming to create
just the right mood to catch observant Darwin
off guard with his notepad of fleeing the stink
of sea weed or the rotting body of a wren

I hit with my car on the way home, wrenching
the steering wheel to miss. I guess evolution
had it in for that bird, though it really stinks
because when I was a kid and still had to walk
I flinched at birds. poking notes like Darwin
at the beagle’s hull, like sympathy creates

possibilities, like turtles with necks create
less effective hidey-holes or if that wren
had just swooped up I wouldn’t need Darwin
to feel better, to justify its death as evolution.
I could have at least stopped, got out, walked
back to see. I open the vents to get the stink

out of the van when I pass something stinking
and dead. Sometimes it’s an act of creation
to kill, a turtle. To get in the car, leave walking
behind. Maybe there will be a giant beaked Wren
that can take on cars, something that evolves
into the splat on the road called Darwin.

Wheels roll out a wren’s beak in the traction
of my evolution. Every mark bears the stink
of creation. Monkeys walk in Darwin’s head.

Judgment of the Furies

We inherit grace, middle school and needles.
Recall how we were gasoline weaned
for mercy’s sake because mercy delights
in her electrical lights (bitch) meanwhile sparks
on the horizon are a prelude to the whip of dawn,
her magnetic cleavage beneath the meteor gown.

You men who worship at the temple gown
we can see you are in full endowment, needles
opening the gates to penetrate the crowd, dawn
of faces in delight. She stitches with grab cloth to wean
the abandoned flesh with the illuminating sparks
in hidden faces, by covering forbidden delights

in the feel of the sling in a beefy dress, delightful
and sexy, how the shudders trumpet in a patched gown,
how well she sutures it to my face with sparks
like a mouth. The officers assign needle-
time to fix utterance to your mouths, still unweaned
of distance, other undiscussed gasping dawns,

like the good or free will entombed in the hard dawn
of her new predicament, pouty with a tourist’s delight
for gasping sake in the leaving off. Rip, weaned,
rip rip, oh the windows open with new gowns,
a hand slung bodice of beads made with needles.
I remember being drawn, joined like sparks

to kindling, into fire then rearing from sparks
up onto cloth, exploding your clothes like a dawn
sky investing fingers with the ruse of needles.
Come water, she thinks, bead by bead. It delights
with shudders the fading water of the faithful gown.
She uses her jiggling trumpet call to wean

the pavement and grasses, she disaster weans.
What comes after? the radio? disasters sparking
earthquakes in solidarity with the long grass gowns
over what is sufferable, the held breath, dawn
shaped sewer’s burning lungs. The ocean bride delights
in the first dance on the surface of needles.

So the dawn of her dark eyes sparks needles.
My hand goes through her dark gown and I lose
it. She weans me of judgment and I delight.