Sulfur

Standing in a field of overgrown flames,
looking around the ground not seen but sensed,
obscured to the sky by insatiable smoke -
to your right a burning hand slowly reaches out to
you from the fire silently offering it’s guidance.
Abstract corpses float in the blue sky above and filter light
beams as what sounds like the playing of duduk flutes or casts
pale shadows sentient enough to crawl around solid objects.
Adopting the form of an odd or even numbered shape to
survive in a realm tyrannized by the circle.
Our future’s eyes glowed an impossible red,
wildly well-groomed armed & merciless,
behaving themselves like patient predators.
Intuitive Institut of California – weaving baskets made of wind.
Everyone you see around you a black shadow except
for the clothing they wear.
A dog barks infinity.
A pitbull with three rows of shredding teeth and long hawk’s
wings begins to growl at you as it steps closer reading you with her
artificial eyes.
The desert temple with mazes in endless hallways and random
doorways that either lead you deeper into confusion and death
or outward toward consciousness and de-conditioning – all of this
manned by monks with the eyes of owls.
He laughed to himself as he quickly descended Bliss’s staircase.
Crystal obscurity.
(Skipping one vision I’ll never tell you.)
Neon violet cannibals sit meditating in the jungle mandala’s monstrous
and bellowing darkness + the blind night teeming with futile screaming +
slithering and seductive hissing + howling + cackling + heavy breaths and
footsteps that shake the earth + nocturnal concealment the night crowded
with vicious beasts + enclosing you seeing you the cannibals sitting
there lightly shining + stillness unconcerned as pyramids + homicidal focus
on oneness with sacred syllables.
The ocean a pale blue.
The photo was of her looking off into a calm light,
her head overshadowed by a halo of raven’s feathers.
The ruins escape me the ruins of me you your body of broken architecture.
Blurred speech.
The look of sadness in his eyes as the flower blossomed.
Wide transparent roads over dark canyons brewing green flame lead
into the spectral horizon.
A century of bloody palms guiding direction.
The now crater-faced pale moon called Earth orbits an astonishing
colorful eye.
A metropolis of flat-colored prisons, slim rectangular windows
starring out into a distant freedom.


A pause of brightness in the scenes of devastation.

Intermission 3: Maybe This is For You

They're never gonna stop.
The flies will come crawling down the walls
like spiders mugs of alcohol in their hands and
fists or middle fingers in the rest; wings buzzing
and fidgeting impatient for flight or inebriation
barcodes splattered viciously across them.
And the squirrels will sit in the trees laughing
throwing rocks at you and your morning jog,
rocks at you and your morning dog.
The cops will be just around the corner waiting
on the side of your building hand on their holster
eyes peeking your death, waiting for the right
moment to apprehend your future, gun-down
your witnessed potentiality.
The worms will crawl out their holes to die in
the sunlight.
The cat will come home at night from where
he rarely says and at the first wrong word or
idea turn quickly around and back-hand his wife,
or girl-friend, whomever the current one happens
to be, and beat her till she screams, beat her
till the child upstairs understands what it means
to conceal yourself into pieces yet still remain whole.
And the whore the bitch another feline will come
home from where she always says smiling as
she takes her shoes off and asks her children
what they had for dinner, God knows they having
to seek elsewhere for sustenance, children bruised
by her lies and sabotage, a faceless red-lipstick
objector.
And the pigeons and sparrows will line up like
the horizon at the table where is hot food, handed
out by glorious hands, and receive their dish maybe
their only dish for the day or the week left to humbly
walk away in THANK YOU and steal what they may
during the rest of the week.
"I am tired..." the dog says and gets to his bed,
begins seating his body, calculated and carefully,
relying on SSI and a green cane to lower himself,
and gets his body to a steady spot, that's comfortable
enough, a veteran who fought in a war we never won and
forever has been treated as the loser.
Dog stares blankly at the world before him for a minute,
seated on the bottom bunk of the bed he shares with another
above him who too may be hostile yet hospitable.
He sits staring there till an older gentleman a
fellow vet and denizen of their place of housing walks
past him and shoots a joking remark at him which
wakes him out of his wake to which he smiles lifting
his head and shoots back his own laughing remark.
And the disabled dogs will sit with their sense of humor
on beds marked with expiration dates bodies honored
by scars and useless medals trying to leave behind the
wars that never ended, just quieted down.
The seagulls will swoop down in their white suits and
rip off the poor.
The ghastly possums will haunt the city's dark places
and crevices brooding for the roq or the needle or
the glass.
And when the fire's burning your town of rest to
the ground the raccoon will furtively appear and look
at you with clairvoyant eyes that say - "I told you so."

Pull Pit

The cold chilling wind is my blanket.
Curled up or tying my limbs together for warmth
some cardboard and disturbing sounds from animals
or machines are my mattress.
I am decaying.
My sleeping bag is my home on these bitter nights but
my sleeping bag has been stolen, taken from the place where
I hid it.
The shadows spit and sneer at my footsteps,
make threatening motions.
My dreams are no shelter, there too I’m exiled within and worry
for my dryness when the bad weather of my brain brings rain.
A reality of exhaustion: weeks and weeks without proper sleep
my mind my body my soul dragging its feet glossy lips and pointed
fingers telling me it’s fake, I’m a forgery, that there’s plenty of
opportunities out there for me to lose hope.
More sand is brushed from my hair than the dirt beneath your feet.
I am no junkie or alcoholic but those two things give me armor
against the night.
Some one says “Well what about Allah?” and what about Him?
Maybe I’ve fallen out of favor with Him too.
The crickets no longer play so the scorpion sings.
The butterflies have caught on fire and the snakes fall from the trees.
There is no where left to hide and we know someone has chained up
all the exits.
The firing squad will be here soon but never soon enough plus
I’m told about their aim.
This sunlight thawing my cells warming me is the first warmth I’ve
had in 8 hours and I will stop writing this piece soon so I can get to
the food line and have my first meal in what has been much more so.

4 Going East

Games of capture & release
A planet trapped in a sphere of suns
Written while shining
The melted sea
Mercury
Silver stones plated then borrowed
The song over before we really heard it
None of us were ever born
Our dreams grow feathers and wings sprout from our skulls
Wait until the ray of light then release the arrow
The wicked fall in the peel of lightning
Bugs crawl up the inside of my skin
Plucked the guitar string once and ears waited for the answer
Time took its hat off and waited.

In your world the color of nouns changed on their own:
Green lights became black
Trees became purple
A Black man turned into chrome
etc infinitum
No one believed what they said anymore.

Descendants of the lizard triumphed to sin
The lights flashing injured our journey to flights above
Measures were taken to prevent the kill
The sword was scented and sweet
The shoulders shrugged
The dead walk alone through opium fields
These were words we just happened to censor
When you looked into his eyes you could see the world
reflected in snow, snow falling in his eyes
War crimes
Hitching a ride with Vishnu to the Sahasrapadma Chakra
Fade in fade away
Disguise the erudite / gold
Bubonic dog
Lap up the God
Salient treasures
Up octagon eyes
More passengers load with lips like meteors
Betrayed by favor
I don't make the rules I break them
Real like vomiting blood
Soldiers smuggling art out of the heart of prodigies
The face was smiling when he laughed
All you need do is say worm and the fish come running
Their team was too clean to be Buddhas
Exalted are the war cries
See the fist bleed radiant
There is no center
A garland of planets managed to slip away
The street lights revealed no escape plan.