Bread crumbs for sea-gulls—
they'd go for my eyes, too,
if I were dead!

ALTARED

All of us bowed and hunched over
the cross-circuited altar, gathering cinders,
left with a trojan horse god-husk of a cause
running on the purest flop-sweat...
Okay, I admit it---it was such a rush!
Getting you that close to the fever-line
of believing! I had a bet running.
Five angels with a suicide pact
against a blood transfusion to open arms.
What are the odds?

HOSTILE MEET

The elms, like stooped elders,
crowd the streetlight.
They’re all about tendriled benediction.
A face is forced in harsh relief.
It’s you, with a key, with a knife,
with an ointment for my knees
blown out during the last war
no one was told about.

I swallow the code entrusted to me.
I could slit throats with the shadows you make.
I’m waiting for your company, cuz
I can’t come apart.
A spore clutched in a fist, a loose thread.
You ring the bell. We’re about to start.

WITNESS PROTECTION

All eyes are on the hands that offer redemption.
All ears are tuned to the sluicing sound bite
wire-tap that proved I was somewhere else
when that revamped St. Valentine’s Day Massacre
went down. I am gut-shot and full of promises,
building the bridge to nowhere
off the sweat of my foreshortened brow.
I am offering a shelf life on my imagination,
a room with a view toward amnesia.
I’m already pulling up stakes, leaving town.

SAVE THIS DANCE

I dust these old bones off. Forgive me the comfort.
Here’s me getting down to bubblegum pop,
at the dock that is adjacent to the yacht club inclusive
of everything ever listed in the American Dream.
I bobble and twirl, a dashboard avatar with its’ own agenda,
a spoiled flank steak, an Ebola of best intentions.
Oh, Ava Gardner, grassy knoll, magic bullet,
I’m still dancing. I’m the blind spot, the slight
that settles the score. Close your eyes.
Can’t you wait for what’s in store?

Drunk on the roof-top
a praying mantis strikes
my shoulder—what luck!

Beautiful but cross-eyed
she walks by, wearing
a Jekyll and Hyde T-shirt

Pigeons peck between
cobblestones; I note
the dimming light

AMERICANT

Well, I been through the desert on a horse
with no name, but I had to shoot it, and
strip off its’ haunches for dinner.
I didn’t really think that one through.
Now I’m sitting very still, and it’s good
to be out of the rain, but I’m dying of thirst.
I’d be the world’s perfect cannibal,
but there’s only me, and I don’t think
I love myself enough. My horse!
My kingdom of porn for another horse
with no name, but one with sufficient
papers to get me across the border.
Note to self: Take up horse breeding.
Also: Find a way to smite my enemies
using only a rusty thimble, the elastic
band from my sock, and a losing lottery ticket.
Wait! That meager dowry enables me
to open an account on Ebay!
I am vast, I contain multitudes—
and every one of you is up for deportation,
unless you listen very closely…

REPULSE HYMN

We could start again, free from the pale gaze
of nostalgia or newsprint. But our nerve endings
can't stand the blank air, they glow like threaded
coal when released from the skin.

I will sing tonight as I heard the drowned
mistress sing, freed from any repetition
of remorse, a carol to the choir at arms,
a soldier with an innocent smudge
on his cheeks—Oh please! I’ve been waiting
to break through for weeks. Just let me speak…