Song of the Insufficiency of Human Endeavor

Golden light suffuses his face. It’s a sort

of grace that makes the fool

holy only in retrospect.

A bit of rouge, a touch

of ointment to kill the lice & this old rogue

is ready to turn a newish trick.

There are mice

under the bed & scabs covering

my forehead, but may I interest you

in a tissue to dry your

slactivist tears? A signal of renewed virtue,

perhaps?  My Whole Foods

shoplifting spree keeps me running

out of luck, but there's nothing 
more dangerous than a man 

without gluten.  Our committee
has assessed that man is in need
of further assessment by our committee

which is comprised mostly of the dead,
who agree that life is mostly 
about honoring the dead.  

We regret to inform you 
that your attorney has been recalled
due to a faulty airbag; in the meantime

please enjoy the in-flight movie
"Your Life," starring Punxsutawny Phil
and the cast of Supertrain. 

Everything Will Pass, Everything Will Go Away

Another tin can
at the end
of the hypertubule; someone
holds the line
while entropy
exhumes ghosts
supermassive
like the heads of
the nails
in me.  Hierophant
on a stick observes
the runes in plasma
as planets cool to
wobbly metaphors.
All matter is dark,
all manner of creatures;
until the primary virtue
of your life
is its length.  Going
gently somewhere
so far away from
said trooper
who must have contemplated
posting his 100th letter
care of Nobody, who art
in Nowhere: he's reset
his password for the third time
this month, railed against
the feather beds 
to which he is never
invited.  He trades
his revolver for 
a chocolate bar & a decent glass
of brandy then spends the rest
of his war rooting 
for morphine
in the medkits. Four years later,
a handful of coins
& a walking stick are
all that's left now that he's
wasted his last 
morpheme
on a love song that came out
something like a hiss.

Falling In Love Again

It can’t be helped when the

chemicals react & smash us

into other animals. 
You never wanted

to do much of anything

but then you've been drug
to the club & just 
as the strings swell 

they call for the same

song she’s been singing

for almost 40 years.  It’s a sham,

of course, this course set in motion

by your parents & their parents before them.

Traveling through time

can seem almost unforgivable.  You give in

like a stray dog put down in the streets

for howling.  A black cat carved

into your arm.  Takes us

to the reunion tour where some might call it

voodoo, but you know all too well

the different forms of conjure called forth

by an old song or even
a certain pattern of stars.
A bad habit is too sane for a man
like weather, an arctic spirit 
nailed down by the polestar
digs a deep groove at the perimeter
of its leash.  A sad tune
is still music; the noise of a fan
& the tinkling heat
is a ransom note, a random
mote of recollection amid
the general miasma.  Your 
second wind broken 
on the crystal rocks
of someone else's Shangri-La.

Das Alte Spinnrad

Is a doomsday machine,
falling forward & backward
into death; she's into death,
but not literally.  Memory
quits easy, but I remember
everyone had the same torso
& one of two styles of feet.
A cylinder of Cheez Balls
more often than not exploded
like it was full of replica
snakes.  How many days
of TV news?  The family years,
like a myth--only robots
are real & they are organic
constructs spinning yards
of synthetic dendrites; can you
call it a memory palace
when it was a raised ranch
& the heat didn't work?
When the old man is gone
you'll be left with all of those
coins he took
from the eyes of the dead;
pay the boatman to keep
his mouth shut about the bike
you stole. You're forgiven
for coveting the playing
cards stuck
in its spokes.  You
were given that trophy
one time because
no one else competed
& so you rode
in circles, both the best
& the worst all at once.

Who Is Throwing Clay?

The judges push you out,

make of you a jaded warden

& every greeting becomes 
what you hope isa coded

confession. Everyone

is an Uber driver &

most people are grifters,

too, drifters dripping from their

broken molds. The new

austerity means

there’s fewer beers to go around,

more saved for the mayors &

the jailers.  Such things

embolden an eruption.  Such

bloated think is tempting.

A tamping down. Who doesn’t

want?  Who doesn’t spit

in the wind when the leaders

say it’s raining? At least 
the cattle in the factory 
has an exit strategy.  Hard
to burn it all down 
& start again when everyone
is wet with tears.  
Nothing a few thousand years
won't solve.  We're the peasants 
in the game who mill about
town forever looking for things
in barrels when the dwarves 
& the elves are getting 
rich of your data.  After 
thirty years you get a clown
who breaks your am. The clown
is an unpaid intern. 
Don't sling mud,
throw bottles. 

Youkali Tango

You, Kali Ma
say presto, diamond.
My vagabond bark
errant in the grey land.

Lilies are too small,
but the faerie who lives
gently moves you
through the fair.

Kali Ma,
our desires don't pay;
Kalie Ma,
cysts & bones,
cysts & plastic.

Kali Ma,
say the terror where
we quit troubling
to dance in the night
like an eclair,
a dark star in a suit,
that's Kali Ma.

Kali Ma,
say we respect
all the changing views,
You, Kali Ma
say we pay
for dead handsome lovers.

A seance
for all the human hearts,
deliverance
from this our poor domain.

Kali Ma,
our desires don't pay;
Kalie Ma,
cysts & bones,
cysts & plastic.

Envy knows us,

lassos us to the human,

the tediously quotidian.

Poor quitters on a terrace,

we’ve soiled our trousers &

no one fears us. We’re soul-

less but still you hear us,

our one & only Kali Ma.

You see the tears cried full of fears 

& red as cherries, pomegranates saved 

for our lady. In our cores,

our tendons creaking. Where hearts

would be, there’s only leaking.

What if there is no you, there is no

me? What if no man can leave

this island? You’d sail without us, Kali Ma.

Kali Ma, 

what if our desires don't pay? 

Kali Ma, 

what if there is no sense, 

no deliverance?

What if this is it, 

Kali Ma?