Abrupt

I think that I shall never see:
Occipital lobotomy.

I wander Victoria’s Secret, flaccid.
That negligee, those naughty thongs,
no longer speak to me
like poetry’s

paint splatters:
          Black!
          the playful kitten wife.
          Red:
          mistress, cartoon tiger.

All business, business, business:
Machine-plumped carrots dangle.
Their swaying mocks my
breathing, soothes
my clenching
softly
swaying talks
to me

it whispers

warm

it nuzzles

no, it slithers
into

me, its

vicious

reptilian
CODE
.

I have set my jaw against you.

I will drive you back!
each lusty pixel,
back into the sea,
where focus groups and pheromones
break
and break again as mist
upon my barnacles.

At the mall again.
Bodhisattva on a bench.
Echo holidays down Muzak channel.
Swirl of shoes.

Directory says
I’m here, can’t prove it.
If I am a dot, then:
escalators.

Food court, maybe
I’ve been drugged? Soda
footprints,
neon seizure?

Objects
multiply: third eye tracks
the heart, the ass, the bag.
Muzak blaring.

Candy!
A swelling OM,
always free, with purchase.
(Brut, organza)

Balled-up napkin,
wheelchair ramp.
Ten couples, griping, wander;
holly candle.

Shoe crunch coffee bean.
Spritz perfume?
Only if it wakes
me up, Madam.

Three days, seemed like,
lotus in a cave.
Blinking yellow lights, life-
time, parking garage.

All bow!
Charlemagne dons Emperor’s
Florid garb;

He invokes Justice.
Knights, lords, mercenaries –
None opposes.

Punished, quashed rebellions:
Saxonia trembles
Unctuous viziers wax xenophobic.
Year Zero.

 
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 daggers

Nobody knows
At night my eyes shoot fire;
Padded cats slink skeptic
Past this frenzy

Fingers fly
On phantom’s keys
Hammer out the fizz
Of synapse, lung and spine
Cathedrals rise

Just a cankered worm
Is all they see
Twisting in the mound

But I am more

Not a resource, not this name
Not a shirt and not a brain

Something more

Can’t you see it?
Every body
Is an eye

Bobbing on antennae
Thousand strong and
Alien and very, very old

Or greener –
Tips of branches
Stirring in the gale
Of eons’ storm

Something more

Until
All eyes shoot fire, thirsting
For ignition on
This humble globe

But they don’t know

I show up smiling
Shaven face, disguised
In shoes

A tuft of fur:
The cats’ affection
Winking at my secret
From below

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

It is time that I waxed pedagogic
On a subject that’s often confused
By the shallow mass, unschooled in logic,
Who can only attend when amused.

When told that the planet is warming
They snort with an ignorant ease:
“All this talk! I don’t see no warming.
Outside it’s just twenty degrees!”

The problem? It lies in confounding
Two words (and I’m just gonna rhyme it)
I’ll say it at once, and resounding:
That weather is different from climate!

What’s going on right now is weather;
The weather can change on a dime.
But climate’s a pattern of weather,
That gradually changes with time.

But they’re spaced out on Beck and O’Reilly,
They listen with one ear cocked wrong
To pundits abusive and wily
Who cynically string them along.

Their lower lips jut in defiance
Of that which they don’t understand
They’re wholly uneasy with Science
Their votes are, of course, in demand.

Such tender minds, such simple vices,
Somebody bake them a cake!
They boot up their hi-tech devices
And proclaim, “The moon landing was fake!”

 
Eggs and cheese on toast
The day begins like others
Bifurcation point

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.