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.

In fish-stink markets
drunk again
unready for attack
I vomit down the wishing well;
dull animal stares back.

These forms arising from within:
illusion without end.
These animals were always mine
to butcher, or befriend.

I do not mind:
This hole, this heart,
the knots were loosely tied.
The desert’s lip is at my boot,
machete by my side.

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

It is a wave of flesh
Chunking tubes of waste
Squeezing themselves through holes
Too small to follow

Crashes over me
Washes through me
Pauses awkwardly in moments
Saying,

Goodbye.

I see you go by
Smiling with an oar in your hand
As doomed and unforgiving
As a lobster

Glaring from its tank.

birthday cakes, paint-by-number
catching crayfish or
burying the pink robin;
plane flights to visit family,
clouds out the window,
the creviced mystery of furniture,
mammarian cushions and
black vinyl vulvas;
scavenging on bikes
after july-4th fireworks,
looking for live ones;
the ant-ocidal obsession
with the sun’s cleansing stare
when focused through
the 2-volume-oxford-english-dictionary’s
magnifying glass –

i should say, confusion is when
the brackets of sense fall away,
like the rising rocket’s access scaffold
leaving the mind to expand unchannelled
without reference or depth
as car wheels spin on ice,
and running cat-paws
scrabble foolish
on the linoleum floor

confusion has a buzzing
sound it makes,
or that clings to its sliding belly.
all ten thousand ghosts
of the strap-bulging blare,
when those straps burst,
return to pure vibration:
they show form
only when restrained.
this hum,
sigil of confusion,
apes the shadow of the waking mind,
sub-resonant shadow-stratum
of creation.

i burst through into its cloister
wet with alien mists
and establish myself,
a tolerated guest
of confusion’s fancy.

Adam’s dust in on your temples
David’s thirst is in your loins
you have crossed the sands to see Me
don’t forsake me for some coins!

for the charm of life is fleeting
often squandered, often bruised
and the one sin I can speak of
is the sin of life unused

so, so little living
half the space i had before
now the vision
is nocturnal
and kept alive with hope
good intentions
and maybe just a little cruelty