Achilles Didn't Wear Armor

sometimes when the conveyor jams
(often)
I try looking for Jesus' face in
the broken wood pallets
the gears or
the settling clouds of dirt
I make when I rip and tear
apart those boards. and when things
are real bad
(more often than the conveyor
jams), my skin hardens and
bronzes over my
soft pale flesh and I'm
tougher than fuck like
Achilles, yeah like the colossus of
the factory. so when they raise me
up to crucify me from those
forklift beams, those iron
spikes of redemption, for production's
sake, I will not bleed for
them -- no, my armor is
tougher than fuck like
galzanized hearts & pipe bomb dreams.
weld me to your cause and
I will carry everything tonight on
my spikes of pain and lost time -- and
when my olive shell starts to
b r eak I'll remember that
Achilles didn't wear armor and I will
spill my blood like a
tapped well like a
draining sky like a
dead brother like a
granite slab. and if I ever
find that face in the dirt or
wherever it is that face has been
lost -- I will keep raising myself up&
uptofindmyplace.

voices

I remember it snowed heavy
that year.

he said he didn't want to talk
about it.

the ham was cold when I walked down
the stairs to eat.

she talked about their first christmas
together.

they had both just gotten out of
bad relationships.

she cried as she was telling me.
that was years ago.

maybe that's what they're talking about
starting over.

there's a star on top of the tree
we lost the angel.

when Ben was home we all decorated
he left us.

the christmas lights are
finally blown.

maybe that's what they're talking about.
christmas lights.

I walk back up towards
my bed.

and try to count the number
of prayers

I lied during. there were
over 138.

maybe that's what they're talking about.
lost faith.

my father throws a bottle
and leaves.

fragments resonating past his tires
peeling out.

he didn't drink until I
was born.

maybe that's what they're talking about
being alive.

my mother starts to clean
up again.

I wonder if god hears her crying
every night.

tomorrow is christmas and he'll
be gone

again -- downstairs the voices
die out.

they are still buried in
my dreams.

those voices of a dead child-
hood winter.

claws

nice frame.
I'm next to
a hawk, digging
before the great
saltwater altar of theast.
we are old friends,
he and i -- brothers
with bloodless beaks &
inky talons.
he screams out angry
at the sky. i answer -- open
mouthed and smiling.

he
glazes over wings
coating whitecaps -- carefully.
the sun retreats from
the drunken earth; bloody.
black.blue.beaten.

my shameful claws
grow tired. sinking
sand swallowing my legs.
wings
of dirt,
chains of sky.

to be that free.

"Let me take
your picture. This is going
to look fabulous." she
hides behind
the lens and I am still
thinking of my
solitary brother above.

but now
I am reminded of
her summer sweat &
boyish daggers cast
in the fading light of autumn.
softly
her voice echoes; buried
within a haunted hallway
of memory.
her glorious dark claws
slashing silently
at my throat.

cold nights, headlight eyes
beam over open windows when
time (infant wind of eternity,
compass for the sun) neatly
places you awry; fog kissing the
virgin glass, you speak in smoke
and scales -- rippling in your wake.
someday, your voice will orchestrate roses
to a jealous death and
my eyes will not find beaches
at the end of the world. please
-- let me walk you inside.

Parallax
(for john kurtz)

on the soft green calendar
you refused to use, her hand
(quivering branches -- soft pine in
rainstorms) poised, marker pressed
elegant blood into life.

your heart; outlined weakly
two days after the hospital
(fields of snow walking single file
to the firing squad) workers
released you into the sun.

the bored face of God
stole your mirror and I watched
(cinder hands exalted -- raise
your altar of flesh) you sink
into the dead February dawn.

daggers of faith

what they told you was a lie
darling, salvation isn't always on the other side.

heroin moonlight shaking
the baleful blackness away
in umber covers under--
cover, we recite an our father
crumbling dialectic deceit (crushing
hyperbolic heartrates, we'll trade:
prescription beans for magic pills, your
name and mirrors
for trembling daylit daggers of faith)
who carries god's golf clubs
when the angels are on their knees?

go back to sleep and dream
-- the simeltaneous shadow of
thoughtime walking with you, tracing
the gentle curve of your back, whispering
delicate crystalline sunlight into
your overflowing heart til it
s - h - a - t - t - e - r - s
and the fever of faith
is nothing but an unfinished glass
of red wine
two sky tablets and
your drunk ghost screamingrinning at dawn.

electric renaissance

the language
of tiny jagged hooks
growing in my brain.     shimmering
bloodwords falling along
the ceiling of my tongue
spatting litterature, spitting
littleature across the tiled bathroom
floor. pools of
dust and things that never
hurt enough:         the whispers of collapsing
                          stars in the mirror.

those hooks
scrape across my
hollow turtle shell larynx.
rip the soft
phonemes from the stone
cradles and
scream.

   across my eyes these fucking roaring singing hooks
   don't ever stop waking up words at dark o'clock crying
   in oceans of frozen whiskey carrying ships across the
   shit literalture for war for death for christsake i need to
   fucking sleep hooks! i need to speak, set free and span
   the awful coffeeality, blood cracking across the air where
   electric daggers slash synapses in the corpus callosum
   of time, til half-naked crawling, dripping television voices
   the dark honeyed blood of language, crushes me to the
   floor. deadly poetic hooks -- why do you kiss my teeth
   with darkness from your radiant palpable mouth?


my mouth
like a fading point of light
sears the books
i love with white noise -- somewhere
a lion opens his
mouth:

                                                                                                          [nothing.]

heartlight shaking open
shatters scattered
thoughts of flowers -- lillies
and orchids crawling slowly above
your ears, crowning you
in the morning -- you speak,
and my eyes grab you,
hold on to your mouth while
giant droplets of light
crash to a beautiful death
on your skin.

to be that lovely.

a bowerbird in love with
summer, with life
without fear of a little rain
on a new song please
darling, your
trembling smile
is what keeps me
[shining.]

Desperation Song

1.

driving home with no radio
static screaming in your skull
black moonlight shining through
the windshield, you think
about the pills
you'll crush
and snort
when you get home, the pills
that are supposed to
help you -- there's always something
helping you towards
the finish line; the existential loneliness
of the alcohol in the
glass next to you, the baleful
boredom of the woods
you keep driving through,
trying hard not to steer into
the biggest oak you can find, the
family that can't say no.

there are
so many
stars tonight.

you want to be like that
-- cold, distant light.

2.

the tv sits unused in your apartment;
your heart
sits unused in your chest,
frozen like
a Michigan lake in winter -- you've never
seen a Michigan lake, let alone
in winter.

her picture
is turned down; everything makes
you tired now, life is full
of exhausting efforts, this
poem is tired of you,
your dog doesn't come when
you call him, the phone
is dead.

to sleep
forever in a bath
of cold darkness, of
cold stars. outside, the snow
keeps falling.

3.

you make a list
of all the things that have gone right
and start crying because
your drinking alone on
a Tuesday, watching static
on the tv and listening to Elton John
sing, "I Want Love."

you make a list
of all the things that have gone
horribly, horribly awry and laugh
because you know this
is how the night will end
for the next two weeks -- pushing
the light to the edges
and falling into bed, bottles
of pills and liquor
where an alarm clock
should be.