Sadistic
Smiling
Dedicated
Purposeful

Strapped to the one man seat.
Cooing whispers
Seek to calm me

Docility is expected

Cherished

“Pain is your friend”
“It makes you feel”

“Alive”

The Shroud
Masks the light

A communion with the unseen
The unanswerable question
The unknowable
The mystery

The Shroud
Is the nexus
The Way-port
Into Jung’s collective unconscious
Obscured by the whirling fog
Of shared pain

Black robed acolytes
Crying obscene prayer
To upside down crucifixes
Macabre laughter
Play counterpoint
To flashing strobes
Illuminating the large strap on
Black dildo
Adorning the Virgin Mary

The Black Mass
Of the damned

They sing

Of heartbreak
Of lies
Of murder
All the Saintly sins
Since the universe was born

Once again
The black Shroud descends
Borne by renegade rapper angels
And I welcome it

No choice

You gotta learn
to love
The Shroud

or

Go insane

“Can I sit with you?“
Her front teeth were missing
But it only made her
More beautiful
Like the damaged statue of a Goddess
Who had survived the abuse of time and Hun invaders

Pharmaceutical lobotomies bind the truth seers tongue
The feral barking of wild dogs
The only poetry left

“Will you love me?“
She asked
As she lay down to die

Fire is no longer Fire
but
Exhalations of God’s contempt
Leaving behind blacked pillars
and marred beauty
Damaged dreams

“Will you smile for me?“
She asked

Blood seeped from her eyes
Her mouth
She paints herself
I silently scream
In the red of Novas
Passion stains her pale skin

Empty chairs …empty thrones… empty words…
Street Dogs look at me with knowing eyes…
They howl a wild song
Echoing through the stars
They blacken the darkness
Give birth to an old truth

“You must love me else I die alone”

Tears are not soft pillows upon which to rest
They are acetic and burn like Greek fire

What was I to do?
She became liquid in my arms
I could sip her from a straw
Taste her essence
Anoint myself
In her bloody water of truth

I sought nightmares
To shade
What she had become

Yet
She boiled away
and was no more

Her vapor painted the room
And I walked alone
Into the night

I downed my American Strat
To a Christian
Who told me
God loved me
As he beat me outta three hundred dollars
He saw the desperation on my face
I saw the greed on his
But
Greed always trumps desperation

I offered to sell my soul
Souls are cheap things
Really cheap
God offered me fettered misery
The Devil?
Unfettered misery

The Devil had the better deal

The voices always come when you’re alone

Puncture wounds stab the web of time.
The smell of unread books virginal in their sincerity
Skeletal remains of a long dead wonder

From the mouth of Cronus
Few can see
It shimmers in and out of Plank’s constant
While dogs bark in trailer parks
And Mothers cry over the death of junkie Sons
Hung on meat hooks
Skin the color of blue sky

The proper people
In shimmering Samite robes
lay claim to performance
They do not eat
They perform
Manipulating gold wrought utensils
Like maestros on a solitary stage
Dining on the marinated tongues of seers

Death is all around me
I hear and see the slow tick of doomsday clocks superimposed on the face of strangers
Feathers fall to Earth shredded by dark raptors that patrol the sky in formations of winged skulls
The winds hold its breath
I feel its distaste
I hear the splash and smell the stench of urine
While singers sing the wonder of creation
The soft skin of reptile eggs
Suck at the hardness of the world

Bar coded children born old
Die young
Eviscerated survivors
Huddle around cold fires
With wild eyes
That sees only
Flat seas
Constant deserts
Promises wrapped in barbed wire
Electric fences
Unscalable walls
Moats of gold fire licks at Heaven’s broken gate
Creaking in soft wind
Its unearthly moan tells the world
No one is home

The tin plated calf
Fornicates with the part time virgin
Priestly processions
Scream from Babel
Muted by soft snow
“To lose is to win
To live means to die
To have not is to have”

Ideologues
Wearing beards of menstruated blood
Eat Negroes
And pick their teeth
Clean
With
Coon dog pricks

Everywhere
There are howls
And laughter

I barricade my window
With long dead words
And the summoned bones
Of …

I can no longer remember

Everything had been pasteurized
Homogenized
Words have lost the fire
They now hum in microwave ovens
Wrapped in fake magic
Pitiless in their cheap clarity

Exorcist perform ancient rites
On the last Poet of the world
Skin flayed and stretched
becoming an Ipod screen
Beeping trivial words
To a long dead Mother
Who disavows its creation
“Yours was a seed best dribbled
Down my thigh”

Truth scrapes across the silence of the world
Bitter
Sweet
Excessive

The monkey smiles
And Babel never sleeps