Beginning with a line from Leonard Cohen

From this broken hill

there was made a choice.

You’ve spilled chilled spirits

onto the dirt inferno

that’s built around me for years. 

Saklas

Sing, fool, sing to me,

the shadow of the centrifugal

serpent. Angel to angel,

faceless face to form

and space, come with the fire

to swing the sphere into focus.

If in our song, you’ll permit

a field to crumble into weeds,

may the oil burn at midnight

as well as at the bloody sunrise.

By then, our shirts will be dry

and the cities will call to us

in shipless drowning gestures.

They’ll know then the fixtures

were never fixed nor stern.

Your motion is your negative

gorgeous twin vision of night.

For me, the moon unhinges

on the brink of demonic dispute,

something for my six lost sons

to pull towards their barren chests. 

You Know My Name In Secret

You know my name in secret. Upon the mountain,

you called as a single dove; above all else; all burnt

with flares in your feathers. Spare my eyes, I cried,

but don’t let me look away. The blossoming clouds

sent you away. Your voice echoed through the rocks,

and my short tale ended in fear, a wretching cough

for the time in the gaping, crumbling sediment.

Then a demon shook me from sleep, his eyes

red and human, his body in the armadillo’s

shape, crawling towards me with a deafening hiss.

Almost a voice, I yelped awake and ran to check

the locks. The dead meat of the fridge was gone

by morning after I fed the hounds and sucked

down alprazolam as if that will halt a vision.

A new bird crept on the branch when sunrise

came, but I refused to look. Leaving the door

unlocked, I jumped the train with unholy wine,

hiding in a corridor deciding what crumbles:

buildings or atmospheres? Who are you?

I hear a smoking voice pawing at the door,

as if my own baptism would bring quenching

fire that no one but my fellow passengers

could see. Come near, bring water to worship,

whiskey to emulsify the acids in your knees.

Stay for the rockets on this unnamable holiday.  

Cage

body is a cage and so it’s so

that all who descend to earth

find a speck of diamond

in their dusted arms

body is a crevice for

the eye that does not see

but knows where to be shut

to wait for the speechless All

Pneumatic Sandcastle

Thrill in exalts: a child climbs on the curving statue.

Upon the urns of the sand, a kite birds away

from the crowd’s hands. Mother Sophia smiles

at the paperbacks burning in the sun along rocks.

Blister, spirit. Call my legs to your front door,

towards the shipwrecks of passed sins and say,

“Take this, some of you, and know it. This is my

breath, which is flowing for all of you today.”  

All Steps Towards a Spiral Path

Of a ladder that descends

            into a Musikal book

is bound to the Sea that pulls me

Generated into the flight of blue jays

What great appointment for the age

Torn             and green            they play with

    themselves            while their apostles

push for an undefined hierarchy

of pain            O sister of the Wise

tired slurps of the Euphrates

           

I give time to you, in time

Fractured Hymn, #1

The shadow, Samael,

loomed over my mirror

and sought

my loins for replacement

I guzzled glasses

of the beast

It was then these

scriptures emanated

into a sophic prison:

“Obscured Apnoia,

steer clear of darkness,

find self-generated Words

so that the Paraklete

my penetrate us,

reach for us within

whatever Chaos

we rule.”