Poetry

ahab

I am Ahab
that terrible king
of self

Fate
a godless windup
ratcheting its red arms

Blasphemy
is an empty hatred
motored as I am
a blood-turned turbine

Hope
a harpoon
thrust towards the leviathan

Life
crushed to oil

Fuel
for the machine

god of a tiny world

i am awake in dawn

thoughtlessly alive
in a stream of life

past a collection of islands
against a grey sea
in a system of seas
infinite swirling grey
revolving about an black abyss
that is needing

i am moving
in increments
of eight
by sixty
by sixty

I am moving
still smaller
past atoms
quarks
leptons
bosons
and fermions
the spaces between things
are not rules, no.

pearl in my teeth

your love
is a hard pearl set in a wound

i wove it pink
of my anger and blood

a hard thing
set in the flesh of my heart

i gnaw it there
smooth against my teeth

i am cold
clenching a pink flame
blood warm in my mouth
yet i am cold

cold as truth
in ones and zeros

i am god
of the spreadsheet
my tiny perfection
translucent with pain
clenching a tiny world.

unemployed

i am taking apart

a world of legos
color by color
ink is dripping
like blood
from latexed hands

putting together
my feet slip
and I lay sleeping
where I have fallen

i wake
in bloody morning
to dip my pen

i make a list
of poems
messy
as the dawn

People of the Corn

The dry corn clatters
grey and crumbling
a mocking death.

the wind blows from deep
within a fetid machine

it is a wind
of power
of money
of commodities

the corn knows
the wind.

snaggle-toothed
it speaks:

Listen prophet!
hunger it knows

dry weeping
for water

drinking
what is blown

grey and dying.

into the night: adolescence

whiteness

is a dream
i woke to
soul screaming
with bad rock
in an adolescent doldrum

suburban night
was quiet
i ghosted
in obtrusive black
a glowing cigarette
against an empty playground

the night
is a dark love
of mystics and devils

the moon
a perilous mistress
hard against cement

would you ride her to God
small man?
as yet
untested
by the mediocrity of morning
a thousand sands of day
wearing the heart
to a lumpy putty

a rage
would crash against the sea
at least a few times

and tear a king
from a white paper heart
burning

and pressing on
towards the shining letters
white in the headlights

a billboard in the distance
brilliant with moonlight

and another billboard
tall above nebraska's
golden waves

not even out yet

God

A tender God brushes,
gentle
insistent.

She asks me to ask
“Where have I been?”
I am asking
myself
less gently
than She.

Who could neglect Her?
that tender power
un-presuming
I cannot speak
after all,
what does one say
to such a God?

A love
so whole
I must
but cannot

the distance
She reaches
to touch.

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