Maha pralaya

All the labor of this man is for his mouth; therefore his soul cannot be satisfied. --Ecclesiastes

Does He not Himself provide me with the accusations I use against Him? –Lautreaumont

And perhaps, at midday, in the fairest weather, with one half-throttled shriek you drop through that transparent air into the summer sea, no more to rise for ever. Heed it well, ye Pantheists! —Melville

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Burst ten frillion ways to continue

without direction to an end

teeming with political bacteria

fulminating extraneous intricacy

everthirsting at the neverending fountain

spouted somewhere deep

from this ridiculous amount of space.

Pretty for no reason. Savage all the same.

To speak honestly

as only a creation can--

just look at me.

The work is unrefined, a challenge

so great in breadth and passion

I have let gone

the conception of perfection

and take relief

in crude devotion.

Maybe there are limits

beyond which even Your beautiful idea

lies barricaded from the light

that cannot shine

through Your own angry density.

Maybe all creators

have a shape

already made for them.

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If You have not forsaken us

I find it hard to gather why

as I am that imperfection

everyone seeks to avoid.

Are You—also imperfect

having made me, proof of error—

broken by frustration

I can’t perform as was designed

too committed to surrender

Your ape to the fire?

Admitting this is saying

You are not what we imagine.

I share a slender notion

of what that is.

Look at what I aim to say.

Then look at what I am.

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I say, of You

I am judge neither purer

nor more judicious

than the next to see the evidence.

In the end my sentence

will be never guilty

because killer and victim
are bound together in continuation.

Beyond the forest the filth and the ocean

the silence of Your equilibrium

so fantastic it is laughter roar and cry

cancels out itself

as stars make of themselves

heavenly asterisks

to qualify the blank night sky.

Hence these fastidious records

of life I keep mostly private

to the faster efface

my memory off of the tomb--

these records say nothing.

But that’s not the point.

That I lived is the point.

That now it must be undone.

How do You make it

so?

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Trapped in the latest

tower of data

sooner eclipsed than evening tomorrow

by a tower greater, more meaningful

more efficient, or something...

hunger gone to the hours

skill to program

heart to machine

vitality to Philippines

thought to a database

dream to necessity

mind to superiors

soul to the vices that choked off

all thought I still was a soul, inconsistent

but, pathetically, conscientious

of my disappointing companions

and the daughter who looked at me

like some sweet baby gorilla

I knew would chew my face off

twenty years hence

I woke aware

of the great loneliness

contemplated for a moment

rendered irrelevant by the next

which made much energy

but never moved me

though I walked past the violets

that long since ceased to amaze

and took my elevator

of cocoa butter and hairspray

into the cerebrum of a delicate business

where language, preprogrammed

makes anathema king

until one day goodbye.

In this condition one goes

contented absent unconscious

forgetful distracted amazing and bled

tamed viper fangs dripping my god
into the dream that goes on.

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In the absence of love

a man is this coin.

Beware the one unhappy to be copper.
Beware the man 

in search of God.

What must be wrong with him?

He is not happy. Yet he is not bright.

Probably a criminal, old or broken.

He only sees the odds against him

and hasn’t the wits to lie

or the charm to seduce

a way from confronting

whether life should be lived

as others are living

in his own deepest fantasy

and, if they are 
how he can bend
himself to normality 
and stop the cravings he craves.

As the beautiful debate their beauty

his ugliness leads the way
into the magic of mind, past
the limits of language
to some crooked antechamber
to wait for translucence
as dead as alive.

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I close my eyes against the velvet experience.

Everything I’ve never known is softer

than my hands upon the pillow.

Despite the precedents

there are no crocuses.

The light and truth

that got away

were just the hummingbirds

about me.

To get me now, well

I am beyond the getting.

No saintly rapture

no CEO optimism

no love to spin

toward the promise the prophets

dreamed up in mountains deserted

when we were Your favorites

and You showed us things nightly.

Nothing but energy

avoiding disruption

of its wayward null purpose.

Still I assign You 
a name and a brain
and all of my messages
because there is no choice
but to be small.
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I am many things, a man

but the absence of a man

as well. The matter to be left

when Your incredible shadow

comes to swallow mine

will fall to the ground
waiting for mushrooms.

I felt it, presaged, one morning
my body, a husk left 
by the great sucking starfish You embody
sucking me into eternity.

I remember I felt it, that shadow, a chill

looking down from an empty bridge

on an empty street

in a bitter winter

how I felt myself atomized

blowing ashes through enlightened fog

hung upon the river

lit up from within

by the faintest sun I ever saw.

I felt it. I feel it. 
I am still frozen there. I will always

be frozen there

looking down from an empty bridge

missing my friend, the craziest orchid

I took for my own

now gone with the sadness, full-flower

I was meant to experience. 

When I think of her I think of You

and hope that I am wrong.

I’ve slipped the noose of common sense.

I have looked over the cliff.

Have you looked over the cliff?

Past that point

God will learn who you are.

Do you want Him to know?

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The clock’s in motion

and here I am

a man in the night

staring at the moonlight

through the tusks of a mastodon

spear in hand to the deafening sound.

The trembling ground

makes me wonder

if anything was ever stable.

Who is more vulnerable than this

pompous

weakling

cannibal

concupiscent?

Why does he believe his brain

will change what made his brain his brain?

Why does his heart evolve

to crush upon the hairy female

spawning with another

emotionless creep in the intimate blare?

Why would he seek more

meat than he can eat

or think too long

of how he ends

begin to find

how he began

and stand astounded

erected spines and streamlined minds

mean shit against the shit?

Why is this

pain? 

Shouldn’t You absorb it?  

Or do You 

when the earth quakes 

like a lover’s body 

also feel the rapture?

Chances

second chances

thirds and fourths

can’t calm the hurricanes of aching

that make me fall asleep by noon

glued to newstales of ISIS, the election

frayed social fabric, desperate politicians

plus-sized magazines

the wacked-out machinations

of the System or of Earth

or a heart that is withholding

some sad secret I made bleed.

You make me sorry

I exist.

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I would aspire to be holy

if I knew what knowing what

holiness was like.

I would end it here

if death did not relent

to new lives

perpetuating the perpetuation

kiss Your strawberries for years

write praise of streams

and naked cream-tan bodies

of supernovae and amphibians

rare as passing dreams

then awe destruction

fawn on earthquakes, supercells

find quantum revelation, burn something

to watch the fire, discover beauty

in the North Pacific Garbage Gyre

in our great gestation

of sterile new animals

if I knew no better:

Ears are for the limited

and prayers are to ourselves.

Forgive the plasticity

of my admiration.

It may be seen as cynical and decadent

typical of one who writes

near the death of his nation

his own planet his cooling star

to say Let’s love evil as good

until the sky is green

as the grass is rain.

But truth cannot be stupid

nor can I be so delicate

in evolution to the higher human dream

that I ignore all evidence

we are the concubines of madness

awaiting ecstasy or a bruise

that we must be something to ourselves

because it’s clear we mean nothing to You.

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How many names

have You gained through the years?

Jehovah Moloch Shiva Zeus Kali.

Ten thousand more 
because we’ve all lost count 
and can’t identify

the branches of infinity.

So many guesses cannot really say

what pretty litanies could be weaved

from all these reveries

or what I should say

to stop the beating

Aphrodite.

I don’t presume, encompass you with God

and cautiously still feel about You

like some coyote by the fire

curious and unconvinced

You will not leap to burn me.

Because You always

burn me.

Because I deserve it.

Because You made it so.

When I flagellate myself

it is You with the whip.

When I am stoned

it is You bleeding.

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I have worshiped

every open flower

of the endless honeysuckle

without sensing

anything but what I awed—

the juvenile experience of truth

others have long since seen

ten frillion ways fragment

into the tropes and symbols

of the disappointed language

they now whisper

I can't whisper
even though I see now
no flower is itself
and what I awed 

now makes me groan.

It amazes me I got here

from my first life as a fly

trapped in rafflesia

using me to grow yet higher

into the goading sun.

It has been argued Surrender

to You is never defeat.

It’s never the powerless

who war against God.

But it’s all a question of aspects.

And I can’t say if I’m here to starve

or step in the sweet pool I drown.

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Excuses come so easily

and senses

with delusions.

O the hours I spent

retarded on purpose

staring at broken clocks

awaiting lingerie from London

lobster from Portland

Austrian paintings

African hides

rugs from Iran

Borneo taxidermy

toys from Japan

til nothing was left

but a liability.

It’s so hard to be good in the garden.

It’s so hard to know what to do.

My head still looks, considers

but beauty is no longer

what it was—just a tint upon a thing

that changes by the angle.

Lies became unbelievable.

Truth became more true

which somehow made it easier

to absorb the lies

I knew lay everywhere

everything, so impossible

ugliness, so prevalent

my vision, so perverted

by perceptions and insights

saw me to perversion too.

I could wear any mask 
and never be transported.
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Glam wet between your thighs

hot for palace disbelief

thick as June

and soft as dream

clit pressed against your lace

a pink and crimson jellyfish

flaring on the water

looking to be licked and opened

distinguished, sucked out

pressed in, rounded

like the horn of a golden continent

and nubbed with teeth

covered by the lips

spat on, redoubled, twirled

your layered meat held

and slapped

the thighs that hold it

tween their altar

bitten gently as a piece of fruit

you don’t want to squirt

upon my shirt

until I thought Fuck all

give me your milk-white ass

bulging in my hands beneath

you take my head and push me in

so deep the pressure

now rings out my fingers

forcing me to deepen, dive in

feel every jewel inside your mine

and you come so hard

I lick it like an animal

sucking off his arrows

look deeply at the thick black line

dividing mandibles you’ve shaved for me

and lick again, the trimmed-up hair

just against my nose

clit exposed, a flaming plume

the heavy sail of woman in her conquest

all land ready for a king.

 ---------------------------------

Nothing’s more divine

than making one you love

Thank you.

I’m not stupid, see. I see

that you respect the man most tested

by love and torture and the ice

of war, deep rejection, tiny coffins

or the shock that all Your wonder

can only poison him.

Buddha had concubines before his Bodhi.

Jesus loved Mary

even if the rumors are untrue. 

Only one like this can face the gravity

waiting for the detonation.

I hate being

this highwire artist of virtue.

All loveliness. All desire. All that was

was never mine. Calls me like the siren

song I never heard.

Were I to purge myself

and satiate completely

perhaps the skies would clear.

But I can’t, I never could

and now I’m in so deep

that I go down

or come back

unpurified.

The whole experiment is compromised.

So accept I am a faking student

that behind the act I’m trying

to convince the Teacher

my understanding of a theorem

whose proof cannot be given.

Thus I nod when I see anything

like Yes it all makes sense:

This birth. That beheading.

The music I first heard

and the last insult too.

A friend. I mistook as Your agent.

Why would anything inexplicable

be inexplicable

in light of what I know?

Or what I knew

for a time

I wish to forget.

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When you come back from the dead

everything will be the same.

Work. Food. Dishes. Car.

There’s some poor animal to feed.

The world has turned, of course

even to a light you may approve.

But what you’ve lived?

You stood before a great white cube

feeling for its secret

while wind and flame

made everything insane

until your heart surrendered

an entrance won’t be found.

When you come back from the dead

everything will be the same.

Work. Food. Dishes. Car.

You may describe what you remember

to a friend if he has time.

But what you’ve lived is something more

or less the end of it.

The stars will give a number

you will understand

and a child will lead you

through the gardens by the hand.

Everything will be like this.

Work. Food. Dishes.

Abnegation.

Happiness.

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Sometime in misty Grand Rapids

the past got exponentially arcane.

Your incredible shadow came to swallow mine.

Every sight held big-time sadness:

the beautiful green of springtime depression

grass pollen on expensive shoes

blackbirds bathing on a minivan hood.

Strange men to divorce again

before the year was done.

That day one moment

I felt a pleasant absence

like clear air

untouchable, without an explanation. 

The mist grew heavy on the bridge

and the buildings 
disappointed.

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Behind the wall of knowing

I would not think or feel

a reptilian farrago

of heartbreak impulse

murder insecurity please.

I was not drunk

always. Or meditating

strictly speaking. Days

went by. I rushed them

like a traffic cop

on a power trip

at rush hour

unable to pretend tomorrow

was but today, a beauty

I would pollinate with pain.

How could I argue with the god who thought Ok?

He

is this:

Liar cheat failure

drunken addict pervert slob

a lonely original

gathering rainbows

in case a lonely original

comes looking for rainbows.

Or think otherwise than God

has made me

this.

And the lady of rainbows passed on.

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The backstory runs

as so many young

and lustful do I did

treasure my desires

in a whirlwind of rubies

full of Ferraris

burning toward fantastic futures.

At a train show under the fireworks

in a village north of here

I took a Ferris wheel to the moon

and thought I’d live forever.

I was no longer river. I was nothing but sea.

A bird trapped in an airport.

Pick your metaphor, your simile.

Symbolic of something so profound

the rationale’s a politician

boring you with slivers of the truth.

Perhaps I was excited—too excited—

to play philosopher

with riddles of existence.

To drink cognac and read de Sade

pretend I understood Spinoza,

Vivaldi blaring in my room

til I was seventeen

shut off from the world

and all but the strangest of men.

The past, so pointless
it can’t be undone.
I mention it only cuz the imagery amazes
me I got here and I'm vain. 

But percentages keep closing in 
damage done

leading on to damage done. 
I learned. I learned the opposite. 
I learned the middle. I learned nothing.

All those pretty memories of mist
and You still wonder from my history

Is this the day he learns?

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Because my car made my credit crash

my kidneys quiver

from the pickling of their tissue

my heart throbs with each thrilling misstep

I stay wired to the candidates, the Caliphate

the bullshit that I know is bullshit

which I watch to understand

how twisted we can be

when we are lost, afraid

and poor and beaten

ensconced and happy, rich and careless.

O the talking points of dying

for a man or a world

are a web of accusations.

Whose deception 
deceived reality?

I see how far away You pore upon us

like a poet fingering Delete.

And prime the new Earth

of jellyfish plastic and sand.

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This is no longer about what it was.

It has turned in
to something else.

My love is thin

polluted pain.

Qabbani and Ashbery

Quevedo. Verlaine.

Nothing works

to ebb the night.

There is no way to turn back time

or think so doing would better today.

A nebulous cloud

follows the incipient dead

and soon we walk blindly in a nebulous cloud

and soon I was walking

in nebulous clouds

seeking the edges of my life

grown bolder about rounding

that cape of hopeless ocean

finding shells I sometimes dreamed

wait on islands far away.

Simple desperation, the wolf

of weak and tender children

acutest pain of the screwed-beyond-belief.

Those are Your nights of oatmeal

cat food and liniments

when I lay down asking

Do I not have more to garden

than a memory of weeds?
Make the pain stop

and I’ll continue to wonder

if peace can be real.

Just let me sleep a little longer.

Until Alaric

comes knocking at the gate.

He’s here.

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I have no idea how responsible I am

for the blueness of the ocean.

It’s zero. I’m sorry.

Apologies at some point have no depth.

The colonist with good intentions

the slaver with his deck of shit

the bystander who looked away

the trillionaire who had his way

the doctor who will clone his lover

consumer with his plastic bags

citizen who took the lies

killer with his mind of demons

all have mea culpas

extenuating from decisions they will

buttress onto hollow language

the wounded have no need for

and posterity despises

as it produces all-new wounds.

It does not matter

if what I’ve done had no effect

or is a straight-up act of cruelty.

Sometimes people, they disappear.

All they want is silence.

To lick their mortal wound alone.

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What good is a vague

accusatory repentance/question

thing-I-call-a-prayer

to a god one shade of black?

Little, I believe.

As little as the universe 
to a limited imperfect man

incapable of not questioning

if his consciousness, the biggest tooth

in an awesome jaw

is another quirk-of-replication

that deceives me for believing

my own awareness

is indicative of nothing but itself.

Or if its collapse

is my portal to the end of suffering.
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See how I am all completely glass?

I cannot be myself again.

There is nothing left of what-was-me.

Bloodless I accept

no explanation can resolve

Your million mysteries

of origin, formation

the corpse

and the spring

the scent of the rose

the sound of the bellicose

the sight of the protest

the feel of the handshake

the zygote

the xenon

the yottabyte

the malfunction.

The boundary.

All elements all acts all sensations

if not illusion

immaterial to me.

No magic contains Your process.

No memory masters Your action.

I take a walk.

The tree that fell. I heard it not.

But there it lies.

--------------------------------------------

However good something is

is how bad it will be.

As I wonder Did September happen?

I know December did.

I deduce what I can with these corrupt senses

and think to myself

What a particle am I!

Picture me as I am. An insect asleep

in the web of an absent spider

his call for clarity spoken to the dew.

Listen while you can. Soon 

only the loneliest librarian

will hear our whispers in the night.

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It’s like the sun comes out

once you have settled for a cloudy day

this relief of speaking

the thunder hidden in us deep.

Words don’t need to last to matter

even as the thunder speaks again

another day beneath another cloud.

Everything is, as it is

exactly as it must be

no other way absurd.

The forest the filth and the ocean.

This birth that beheading.

The dead refugee and the thriving asshole.

Even the sparrows

eating chicken bones

on the sidewalk.

I know this.

Neither jaded nor blind nor even experienced

as any trilobite who knew

the tragic magic

You drag me through today

I know enlightenment

as an emotionless shrug

before a preposterous miracle.

I know You within me 
and am left with a feeling

unlike any other.

I must be the good in the world.

I must be something to myself
I must be

before my heart goes out

like a fire extinguished with cream.