A Ripped And Faded Circular

Welcome to the carnival underneath the ground
Home to moles with painted smiles and earthworm-eating clowns

All ages are admitted with a parent or a gun
Come see our caged ladies where the lions have their fun

Buried on the high wire [unreadable]

Swamp Thing

I was a wonder of biology.
Once my body was full of extra hearts
Calling like a chorus of frogs through the night.
Little by little they splashed into the muck and dove.

Now spring has come around again, and by the river
I heard spring peepers in the trees at midday
Winding up their love songs.

One of my freakish extra hearts
Still surfaces and calls from across the country.
No, no, this is a wonderful and beautiful thing!

My body pumps blood normally, however
With the two strange organs still in my chest.
And yet I feel the hollow place where
No other flesh can take root.

And I tell her, Pollywog,
You still got a room to rent here.
Neither of us is allowed to die first, okay?

Legalese

We sleep in houses like agreements.
The universe never signed it.
Your new device, before welcoming you
Makes you press an acceptance.
There are millions—literally millions—
Of words hammered into blocks of terms
You never read, will never hear
But may allow some monster to eat at its leisure.
No, the universe never wrote it.
I just want to make a damned call, you grumble
And wave away mosquito swarms of law.
You still have to die someday.
Universe wrote that one.
We are trying to bioengineer a good attorney.
We believe the spirit of it falls in our favor.

#25

Six shy,
why try?

Drinking Song

We toast, leaning on rifles,
Eyes over a wall unknown.

Perked ears and slitted eyes
As slim shadows sidle past.

A grenade or a bottle swaps
Grips and our heads tip back

Caught in laughter or less,
Much less, probably only

Scanning the moon with an
Echoless gaze, a smirk, sex.

A red haze unrolls slowly
Down from the aching stars.

The last silhouetted hooker
Unclasps from the party and

Peeling away stands erect
In the street looking up at us,

Two dumb poets taking potshots
At Bombay doors and Mars.

Three Thoughts (And Lo, A Mountain)

If it can't bleed, fuck, or dream
It's not a poet.

Muscle, fire, electricity--
What will the world's next power be?

If ideas could move mass
An Everest would rise in Indiana.

When The Door Clicks Shut

They have been lying.

Nobody knows.
Not a blessed thing.
Not a damned thing.

Instant oblivion.
Beautiful painless nothing.
Forgetful god stuff.
Flipped switch, vanished raster.

Or, worlds exchanged.
Surfacing on alien seas.
Slow dawning on the dim
Morning fringe of the next.

Where the active verb solidifies
Into a permanent adjectival state
Everyone is inventing like mad.

Can I get a witness?