NO CASA DE MANNA

In this city, yellow-smoke sky,
Carnival groans, skeletal cries,
I seek the leaf, the frond, the bloom-- Fire the wallpaper of my room!
Lay your shadow inside my wound.
Leak your tincture to crusted ruins. Awake to me the startled grip
of branches sprung from ribcage-crypt.

No Casa de Manna for you--
It's doors shut to such solitude. Enlightenment's opened a franchise,
All ablaze with peace-bloated eyes. Something ferocious, this repose-- Carnivorous and razor-boned.
An ache of sweat, gasoline lungs,
Means to an end, corrupted sums.

I smell the cannibal afloat
In steaming street-side vendor's moat
of Orange Crush and hot pork pies--
Sell the weakened, we will abide.
It's true, the thick, brackish hue
of this degraded Bar-B-Que
Makes me op for an angel's taste
of road-kill plunder, Mainline Grace.

Oh, yank free my demon sweet-tooth--
An ancient hunger made to suit
Newport smiles and bright penny eyes,
A river littered, self despised.
Down in the hole, we gnaw and clutch.
Vision turns a convenient crutch.
What was once certain as our breath
Is nothing now, beget and beget....