from (C)OVID'S METAMORPHOSIS, Book the Second

The Transformation of Cycnus into a Swan

Hung like a swan 

with a black hole for a heart.  X marks

the place where space & time

become compressed like a week 

spent counting cans of beans

in a walk in kitchen while pissing rain

bleeds a mofo dry

as the blunted son shuns the light

of the flickering screen.  If you’re late to today’s

Zoom, at least  don’t leave feathers

all over the divan because we’ve got company

coming some time in 2022.

The Story of Calisto

A muscle in pleather 

a jewel among the Morlocks,

post-coal, a bear of a

model major generalist

with a stiletto, just a stiletto,

still the night moves 

out past the corn fields 

that have been mashed

into moonshine.  

The Story of Coronis, and Birth of Aesculapius

Corvid nineteen, there seems to be a theme

going on here. We’ll make you a star, literally

 after we sneeze all over

your sensible shoes, insensate with thirst 

like a sanguine human pitcher 

busting through the papier-mache

brickwork to exhume a good doctor

from a mother’s womb;

snakes uncoil from the rod

when they see a trillion ctowns

massing in a shopping mall 

like a nonstop onslaught of tweens

feathering their plumage.

from (C)OVID'S METAMORPHOSIS, Book the Second

The Story of Phaeton

The Vulcan death grip

was a myth, but somebody 

had to have the nerve to sit pondering

the dark & decide to knock you

cold.  Refulgence, effulgence, stick

a spike in me: I’m done. I’ve been starstruck,

yes, but only when dazzled 

by the little fish that swam in the wake

of the scorpion’s whirl.  What to do

when the allergic reaction gets worse 

despite the Epipen, throat closing around 

the morsel of tenderness? 

I remember my daddy’s big bright car;

the trunk in particular where I’d make

my bed of a summer night

with a soup bone to gnaw on.

I had no bootstraps because I had no boots.

Tough love turns tender 

when cooked at low heat for 50 odd years.

The connective tissue falls away

like the pinions of the infernal legion.

The mind is its own place 

& can make a heaven of hell, but 

when your locked in 

your own brain it can be easy to forget

that it’s bigger on the inside

& full of dull dreams

like a Greyhound bus. 

When I was a child, I wanted to die

in space like a supernova

or a wounded angel--their vacuum 

eyes slurping up 

the available light like a golden strand

of ramen.  Lift the veil 

to find there’s only two eyeballs

on stalks & a squawking 

drive-in speaker hanging 

from its broken neck 

beside a beige Dodge 

Dart.  Forky beheld 

my flaming hair 

as I fell.

Phaeton’s Sisters Transform’d into Trees

Study your Latin even though the exam

is cancelled.  Catalog the dragonflies

& daffodils.  Pull up your own roots 

then whittle them down until they’re useful

as a toothpick, charming as a barking

dog.  When Big Government sends you some money,

it’s time to build a guillotine or at least

make memes about it.  Karl Marx

stares at Julie Christie’s ass while Chicago burns

again on the horizon like the cherry

of a Galoise back when smoking 

would kill you & not going to the store

for a quart of milk.  

from (C)OVID'S METAMORPHOSIS, Book the First

The Transformation of Daphne into a Lawrel

What does a T-Rex know of love if he can’t

hold a bouquet in his stunted little arms?

Still he danced himself from pram

to prom, his every cough uncovered without 

an elbow crook in which to stifle it. A bare-

necked lady flicked her hips - she

burned up his bones until he thumped

what was left of his chest & his lungs

like empty toothpaste tubes.

After all, who would want last century’s

apocalypse when you can have two 

for the price of one thirsty god

& a tree that seemed to swipe left

into the eye of the storm that came

before the flood & the famine when

at last I ate the leaves off of my crown.

The Transformation of Io into a Heyfer

Io was terrible 

at Scrabble, but did it for the DMs;

let yourself go 

gently into the donut shop

for no one should wear Lycra unless 

they are taking exercise.

If I had a cow, if I had hammer or a million

dollars, then with mine hundred eyes,

I’d see you the oblivion of the beast 

& raise you from the dead like a stink.

Where there’s smoke there’s also 

something burning in the oven 

like a premonition.  This next part

‘s mostly pixelated & redacted

to protect the redacter.  

If you can hear me, carve your name

into the desk next to the pentagram

& the answers to tomorrow’s

test.

The Transformation of Syrinx into Reeds

Geddy Lee raised his arms 

& all the alien children emerged 

from the burgundy folds 

of his cape.  Pan is god, the dead 

live rent free inside the blink of an eye

in the forest of the night, & 

Old Man Gloom’s got  too much time, 

too many miles on his ticker. I’ve been leaking

fuel into the void, avoiding friends & 

publick meeting places.  It’s not a crime

to crave an afternoon’s soap & a cold brew

delivered to your front door. Once

it’s been bleached, even the foot 

of the colossus looks like camembert.

That’ll do, lil piglet, my train 

is leaving the stately pleasure pit 

& its attendant abyss.  Bury it down

in the hickory smoke.  Cook it slow

& gentle like a disease

& leave nothing but the hooves.  

Once I was distinguished,

a man of some renown, & yet here I sit

asking if refrigerators are running

on time, wondering if Prince Albert

went by Al or Bert.  The peacock 

in the purple light thinks

of nothing & by the time 

he’s heard the blade, 

the fix is in & he’s bled out 

amid the thyme & pan-fried plantains.

from (C)OVID's METAMORPHOSIS, Book the First

The Giants’ War 

They threw viruses at us, the great 

pricks of the needle

nosed dolphins that swarmed 

the Megacruise & died

of disgust, their last songs trilling 

into the thread of the world

re: re: re: re: re: re: re: re: working 

from home if you can call it 

that when no fires burn 

but the wolf won’t come down

the chimney anyway because he can 

see that hearth’s just s looped gif

which is pronounced weltanshaunng

just like Worcestershire & pandemic

which rhymes with pandemonium 

which is just where the devil went 

to wait for the liquor store to open 

again & the Louvre & the opera houses 

& the slot machines at Caesars Palace. 

Somewhere in the darkness,

a gambler checked his condition 

& found it wretched & so he retched,

violently, tasting yesterday’s  lamb kabob 

from the cart in the lobby.  He can’t remember

when he turned from the blazing world’s

clanging slot machines & wandered instead

from one drive-thru wedding chapel

to another: it’s late & he’s weary, 

wearing doctor’s scrubs as fetish gear. 

He keeps searching for whatever

keeps him afloat down this life’s relentless stream:

the Furies are relentless & there’s another Furry 

convention arriving tonight.

from (C)OVID's METAMORPHOSIS, Book the First

The Creation of the World

A mistake was I, 

formed in a whorl of the green

& the yellow & the blue & easy

baked into a cracked little blip.

The earth fell out of the sky

like a page of a dog-eared 

dirty book with hawk’s legs;

the blats of wind like a skittering

machine that makes me benign,

breath-heavy & lisping

in the dirt-piles with the plastic

frogs & the cars that turned into 

people & the men with arms

that don’t bend.  I broke the head 

off the kindly wizard

& pissed my Garanimals, & the many 

rivers of the world there on the cheap

zoned area rug where robots

fought dolls until the stupid night 

was born & its stupid dreams.

The Golden Age

First there were no rulers but the plastic ones

bent back to thwack across our knuckles

when penmanship was deemed

unsatisfactory--weaving pellmell over the dotted line

down the middle of the sand-colored page

like my our father on Friday. But where are their gods now,

those ignoblers who paddled us when their own chakras

were bent so far out of alignment? The charlatans

are beyond the wall once again, hawking

Fruit by the Foot & potted unicorn meat

for our instant mac & cheese. I hope

your fever broke, pores opened, 

those who come too close are repelled by your garlic necklace 

& mask melted from beeswax pellets. 

The Silver Age

The hard black begat the floppy that begat

the rainbow silver that shrieked

in its sheath like the mother box

of evil opened by another in another 

talented & gifted class where things actually happened

to other people & we all went out

in the rain to cry so nobody knew.

The Brazen Age

Of brown spirits, nymphs in situ

in situation comedies; friends

we rolled him

for tokens but he was full

of rotary phones.

The Iron Age

Satellites pick up the screaming

from beyond the 82 moons: 

the Nextdoor app’s atwitter

with pictures of package thieves

& recipes for homemade hand sanitizer. 

Spring’s fields will stay unsown. Caves
are safest. Leave the oxen to roam.