I taste the blossoms at the feet of martyrs
and finger dust from the handcarts of amputees
With the pink tip of my tongue I move
the moon across electric blue skies
I have broken my legs in pursuit of doves
My brain once boiled with such a fever’s heat
that only a bathtub of ice cubes kept
the resulting bubbles from perverting my vision
With each breath I expand in all directions
seeking
the sympathetic vibrations finding purchase
in the apertures of your mind
I worm into the bodies of great men and women
to nestle and feed among their organs
I have sold snake oil with a laugh and a smile while mouthing sarcastic asides behind a blackened hand
I belong to my indignities and they have yet to be satiated
I have supped with the devil and found him wanting
My mind is laid open to rot in the midday sun
its putrescence feeding crabs and seagulls
I fill my shoes with feet of sand and stagger onward
fist high clenching the silent dead meat heart
I have pierced the eyes of God with unclipped fingernails
and heard its’ responding laugh
Fold me unceremoniously and carry me in your pocket
I have chased wild dogs from my room only to find myself
yearning for their return
I write my paintings in a child’s hand
and hang them with initials of uncertainty
I witness the death of a thousand saints
their blood in my ears their screams on my hands
and feel their raw nerves wrapped around my heart
I have produced visions of a plastic nirvana
while roiling in nausea and clownish clothes
I elude the need to answer most questions
and live entwined in the resonance of our lies
The horror of the self tears me page by page
from the beauty of the world
I have felt that strange sadness as I slipped into warm wet flesh
and later drowned in the resulting exhalations of passion
as the furtive call of music across night’s desert
has given me cause to cry
It has occurred to me that women look cruel chopping vegetables
and wistful slicing fruit
I have taken small change from a collection box
and heard no murmuring of souls
Life has awakened me from my hallucinations and
I doubt the need to feel consumed
I taste your death in my mouth and speak in rhyme with my blood
It takes little urging for me to prostrate myself before false love
I relish the pain of the whip on my legs
and consume poisons daily in search of the end
There are no sad truths in this life – only convenient fictions
I wish to be taken aloft by a flock of enraged wrens
I have come to accept madness and it no longer fears my open gaze
It was once my intention to dance loud on the hot tongues
of school children but I am now content to be secretly
buried beneath the tittering tread of their feet
I have resinated teak with the smoke of hashish and
masturbated in a parking lot dressed as a security guard
I write backwards on glass and conceal little with my words
My youthful vigor and naiveté convinced me of my
immortality and superior intellect
now the mirror shouts only of the dying and the dumb
My dreams chase me in the dark while my past lies back laughing
We breathe the same air
We think the same unconscious thoughts
Take a bite from my cheek and begone
cae 7/13/90 – 11/28/08
