Full Meter

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.