41. grotty

we saw Plato or somebody in there yes









chagrined that the phenomenon disappoints:

through a translucent fault line

inexorable chimeras were supposed

(amid the uneasiness of other presaged bagatelles)

to usher some salubrious tides

tenuous glowing signifiers

that should’ve exalted our enviable sensorium

should’ve focused our mind from the root

of earlier predictions to suggestions of imaginary time

lit with layers upon layers of aesthetic ghoulish nonsense



true that some of the stranded corpuscles

testifying to the shrill omission

seemed here and there to limn untimely disharmonies

a paltry crystallization of fruitful eccentricities

a few coils of lavish blithe saucy smoke and so on

but it must have been all in our heads



the cave meanwhile was turning into some makeshift ocean

the worst worn spots unwitting spigots

from where the clumsy wheel of unflattered fate

vomited the awful disarray of eviscerations

scum from suddenly swollen athletes

that exploding ceased to circle

around the depraved circumstantial slaughterhouses

grown instantaneously like poisonous toadstools

and that now were disgorging

with priapic skill and mock gentleness

a crapload of luminescent surely corrosive brine

plus the sound they made copied

that of a scabrous enough moving of the feces

or the macabre scattering of other lachrymose stuff



we saw then not the brittle windfall of insolent sundogs

and triumphant forces accelerated

in a sick shortcut to the pristine origins

but a wreckage of crippled imps

shaky inklings at the bottom

through the clouded flesh of the surface

an irretrievably zoo of buffoonish forms

a crude amusement of indignities nestling pell-mell

in a fog of antipathy



the firewood too clammy

even the wooing crickets and bats rendered lethargic

but not the mouths of the filthy scions

the regimented chiliarchs

oddly following still their dull pecking order

compelled now to exude rueful unsuccessful avowals

of profligate goings-on and a rotten insanity of murders

cataloged in a momentous staccato of squeals:



“we were yikes evildoers

fearmongers unscrupulous swindlers cutthroats

insidious scathing eye-gouging assholes



the plights of fringe martyrs left us

neither surly nor agitated nor weak-kneed

not even numb just awash in opulent blood



in egregious remorse we confess

insatiable qualms and deathbed renewals



the wellborn bonuses sinecures

made us nutty heroes

touchstones to the handsome counterpoints

and confidently hygienic charitable lavatory surgical

as we were the lightning-rods of all the malignity



ripened our fatherlands thanks to those shabby thrills

we provided for the multitudes

we were conspicuously deluged with foolhardy approval

by all and sundry and regardless

braving the horrid bloodletting we wisecracked

with glee and tenacity

breathe brethren breathe

while we broke a few spines”



the faster shimmer of that last loss

the panicky epistolary crisscrossed glimmerings meaning zilch

the juxtaposed stilted constipated sarcasm of the resurrectionists

the risen murkiness turned into a fervent summary

in the last hundred broken manageable initials

uncials and all

of the disjointed mechanics of what we were never really weaned of

the stampeding fragments

the inching waves

the wounded bristles

the thunder receding as we receded

tactfully tiptoed to the left of the stage

no convictions required

forget about all that stomach-pumping

escape trumps truth

our climactic recession all in all a wonder

of posthumous digression.

40. crimson shade

a voyage round the dead space of my fading projection










in detail one thrives, in stale encapsulation, in spiritual shortcuts

in health oaths, in void journeys, in risible scripture: “toil, slaughter, evil whispers...”

in the veil of disdain for strength, for growth, and for other paltry oozes.



I stood outmaneuvered constrained deferential, my ink blood

in woe, with erratic breathing, I told myself: how can you ignore

the gullies, their suddenly beaming eyes, and instead chew alive

the cloying width of undulant nonentities albeit properly geographical?

no, no; what matters dwells in caves, caverns: weight, momentum, booming room

lurk therein, and decay and blooming risk, and excess and the ghostly beasts.



I had taught myself thoughts, inchoate mysticisms, initiations to

polluted astonishing scholarly analysis steeped in liturgies and spirals

rather belonging to the ticklish realms of the philologist and the hypnotist.



emboldened in my linen clothes I followed into more inflammatory thicker

pearly spawns, indeed into almost bold carnal intuitions

I argued that fakes alleviate the better omitted polemical stutters of distress

that coincidence roughly only insofar as it is redemptive rises above nonsense

that reluctant nitwits, their remote flashes of genuine epistemology

are ontological masterpieces of busy sophistication.



those reams of parody transiently dissolved for me the d of “death”

and the remaining “eath” became a lisping existential echo

a defiant hullabaloo against the elite corps of the spinoff

and the emaciated demons of the tilted yellow overgrown noontime speed.



sleeplessness and coffee plus gawking at the wayfarers to and from

the cemetery shared feathers with the thin edges of my silence.



the mood was often repellent, I was afraid of assurances

of cocky females, worse I disliked the deteriorating departure of my toughness

my rapacity, through the tangents of caricatural remorse.



prolific adventurers of whom I’d heard the prowesses stunned

fascinated the underpants out of me and the erudite documents

the gems of keen soliloquies that bore on the unexplored, the utterly pathological

did nurture the encomiums on my startled no longer flaccid lips.



I took as vapid nuisances the bathetic fondles of stinking castrated phallocrats

whose rusted skirts dropped as a flight of dusty moths

over the damp squib of my sourly scoured codicil.



the wayward weather and the untoward locus of my renowned shivers

waned and evaporated as the tribes that erstwhile sailed the skies

steeped in zest and leftward leanings in the deformed excoriated evening.



but those tasteless metaphors belaboring as the hordes of senescence

at the arid demesne of posterity at length proved worthless, gave no relief.



I wove, as I still (threadbare) weave, an adolescent dependence to heights:

the geographical warts that cowardly though solemnly roughly endure

don’t ever shrink as would a bum cloak submitted to the same abuse of wanton bombast.



in conclusion I’ll say that I ascended full of rigor and gratitude to the estranged

summits where disagreeable witches mourn even now the destroyed pledges

that should have clinched the aberrant conflict of their latent ambiguity.



relying like them on weirdness I selfishly, full of vanity, renounced

in extended snores the earlier flirts with unruliness and disintegration

and damned if wickedly I didn’t cling now to the extravagant tactic

of seeing to notch a few sad surreptitious constructive actions of my own.



in ludicrous streams ran throughout the expectorations that I called

poetry, in revenge against which my ventriloquizing navel lavishly frothed:

infested deluge of graphic noxious gasps where monkey guffaws

and plenty other demerits (later blamed on spies and other greasy foreigners)

grew, with a gently relative ease, at last tectonic

so that I felt even buried before any catastrophic incident had really taken place.



and yet in contentment is, in fine, my conceit that I was (as I am) chosen:

an ambivalent closet introverted inner laureate

whose acute glad obscure schematic keeping-at-it venomous spitting

vexes in its error-prone nebulousness the eye of no denizen

my commitment to realize untold infidelities never given

oh well up until now, a proper, verily plausible, chance.

39. bole perforated

cheap potshot








pertinently unsated with the vivid wakes

the jeweled variegated volumes that run triumphantly

toward my untoward posterity.



overnight rapt with the mundane predicaments.



enthralled at the windows, the eyes chronicle collections of bedrooms

aspects of succulent exception, of superabundant prurience.



but now the sudden fright of the customary monster intervenes.



listening twice to the same thug, the same cancerous witch

telling me (and the darker barrel of a shotgun pushes at my stumpy nose)

to tackle manliness, or else.



opulent enervate themselves the chapters of such ornate anathema.



my wood, with the same negative alacrity, the same slow cadence

always striven for in the unparalleled wood of every tree

breaths in diminishing prolixity.



i’ll repent tomorrow, I insinuate, too cool, when the bullet flies.



once resonant, my wood, now crammed with portions apocryphal

sedulously, diligently, cracks, combusts, turns to ashes.