Full Meter
Updated: Mar 9, 2019

What now this night, eyes its past
under shades of cracked glass and squalls
of tricks and fatted calves that pimp
the blood that feeds these fools.
The trick of tale to tell,
I have never told the truth
to well enough alone as well
as now I know the bones.
And the pretty metered fancies,
Like row upon row of tagged toes,
Rub my horny head against
Emptiness, only emptiness and prose.
Some more hopeful grave I would rob
With rattled bones of whiter ghosts;
Some greek house in which I could
sell my blues and sigh away the use
of well known tools, to find that
thin crawlspace between black lines
wherein lives the greatness of the few.
That place where meter bleeds upon an
ailing god's knees, and hands up a suckling
child to be blessed whose cries sound
like burnished steel and whose eyes,
unopened unto the world, gaze into
inner mysteries with a surely cosmic
intensity.
But oh, the hopeless wrist works ever and
ever with less than its fantasies would
fulfill. While the world, that artless,
toothless hag, looks on, licks its fleshless
lips, and smiles.
But I will not go back for her blowjob,
no matter how well the feeling tells.
Let time leave my bones to rust, let my grave
an empty memory curse, before I rest these
weary sentences within the cold swarms, the
money hungry arms of mediocrity.
Harsher than any reality needs, that path
sidesteps the scars. Sits in ditches playing
with pretty deeds. Smoking drivel, and then
dribbling wisdom from one slack side; from
one toothless corner of its too loose mouth.
My words must fly, like myriad ribbons of
streaming silver fancy wrapping the undeniable
void. Must rage, like a water buffalo dancing
in the earth throbbing ecstasy of heat. Must
fill and still fall from the page as sweet and
pure as Mother Mary's milk.
Like the mind of the Infinite, whose mercy is
the long trinkling roll of a pebble down the
angle of our blue steel roof, I seek the floating
center, skips rightly past the cold boss hold
of fear, to twirl in world maddening rhythms;
dancing the dance of ages.
Light beyond the grip of expectation. Pricked
and yet bloodless in the muttered wake. No dream
this being, but part of thought exists beyond
the lecherous, carnivorous fever, unmanning even
the best of that rest of the less in us.
For somewhere, a mother slaps her child, hoping
to get her own licks in before five o'clock
rolls around. Somewhere a worker falls
asleep in his own shadow, an old woman packs
her husband's things in boxes and seals a seal
she will never break, and somewhere a young man
still wonders, Why?.
Somewhere the battle rages and somewhere love cries...
A narrow black soot gathers round
the edges of the fire. I turn away
from the mirror. Get down on my knees.
Lick the flames. Ignore the pain.
Disdaining a single breath
gasps, tingling with this wondrous warm
cold, I step into that dark hole
in the hard ground of my soul:
Flinging myself at that fervent, fickle
seer, I catch a muddy angel and clean
her with my tears.