Forms enter into being, they dance,
They explode, dissolve. White light's
Broken irreparably in the prism glass,
Hot souls condensing from churning
Soupy mists, they cavort, they move
Under mysterious self-volition. Old,
Familiar forms freeze up, fall mute,
Unvoiced, inert as dirt, rusted over,
Their fluttery flag tongues cloven,
Disjointed slam-bang utterances soon
Neglected and gratefully forgotten.
Too long Ymir has slumbered, now
His giant body's duly carved up in
Life-giving chunks, this indolent and
Half-conscious, anti-transubstantiated
God. A primal matronly abyss yawns
Wide, beckoning, this pink horned
Cornucopia chasm from whom all
Nightmares and reason issue, awash in
Blood clots and amnion flow. We look to
Heroes to sever the inward parts, the air-
Filled belly of the dragon-mother, and
Tread upon her bloated liver and spleen.
These long-hoarded seeds implanted in
Too rocky fields; this bubbling cauldron
Catching every squeezed out drop, every
Final fragment of limbs dismembered
And hacked out softer organs; these
Faces with shining scalpels precisely
Excised, or with much-worn gelding
Knives, glove-slipped, inter-traded,
Exchanged and street-bartered and
Rearranged; these ruthless hours for
Self-reflection, for reintegration, for
Reconstitution of the inorganic and the
Dead, animal, plant and mineral and
What's been claimed as human; these
Ghosts of fallen warrior-kings and fools;
These accursed memories both exploded
And stirred by merciful forgetfulness and
Operational disregard; these uncounted
Stars raining down like orange autumn's
Withering litter; these much prized but
Worthless exchanges of monkey-chatter
Voices in their insect points of view;
These harbingers of disaster and after,
Cryptic calm; these long absent and too
Soon returned, deplored, never fully
Exhausted or satiated; these monstrous
Chimeras with their ridgebacks bristling
And yellow tusks curled and blunt, but
Deadly; these vicious scorpion-men from
Distant deserts returned and restored;
This admixture of the real and surreal
Inseparable, now got indistinguishable;
These mysteries, these murder-crowned
Majesties, these dialectic catastrophes
Recast in piebald flesh and glorious,
Sun-burnished steel; these chrome-
Plated hearts of the merciful; these tired,
Wheezing lungs dipped in credit and
Unchallenged avarice; the open wounds
Of midnight's velvet sky still weeping,
Weeping; these slaughtered archangels
Evermore creeping in this God-forsaken
Realm, their golden-feathered wings
Short-cropped, their visions crippled;
These hobbled horses of bay and red
Forcibly led by all too familiar jesters in a
Stumbling idiot's parade; these violent
Thunderstorms of sin and shock with
Their mutagenic lightning bolts; these
Systemic mutilations to which everyone
Is subject; these odd old friends now
Reduced to flapping ribbons; these cut-
And-paste travelling companions whom
You believed you recognized, who
Misremember what each one's unique
Crime is or might have ever been; these
Barbaric reconstructed artifacts of buried
Civilizations once imagined that maybe
Never will be or have been; these
Transitory ephemerals, shriveling jewels,
Temporary exchanges of warring,
Mangled views, regurgitations from the
Glossy production of evening news, all
Shattered vases reglued precarious;
These mismatched and restitched china
Doll faces and their serrated fragments
Stretched across unfamiliar mastoid
Bones; these hurtled down thrones of
Failed messiahs and the half-gods of
Technicolor advertising and political
Sermonizing; these princes become
Paupers and beggars put in charge of
Society's most dangerous attack dogs;
All fall now as these raging seas burst
Free and invade the lands. We watch
The towers tumble, smoking stoves
Belching flame and brimstone. All the
Planets rupture and disintegrate, they
Trail their crumbling guts beyond their
Orbits. The sleeping dragons awaken
From deep subterranean lairs and take
Flight. The swords of men are bared
And whetted to be about the requisite
Business of hewing limb and bone.
The tongues are hacked out, the eyes
Are all gouged, the noses cut off and
Dropped in place, the ears dried like
Leather shells and strung into hideous
Necklaces. All hair is set in flames.
The nostrils are split and the breasts
Are carved. The skull is cracked and
The brains are scrambled. The dire
Wolves have come back to haunt the
Forest eaves once more; the werewolves
Scratch at each and every darkened
Door. Venom pollutes the water and
Poison dust befouls the air, and I'm
Become the hoary tree whose long limbs
Bend down toward the river, quicksilver
Gleaming, racing on, on, chasing flashing
Visions in startling reflection. I am
Handfuls of dead leaves, bug-eaten, that
Fall down one by one upon her fickle,
Mutating surface; she takes me away in
My departing sherds and adherent bits
Of glossy glaze. Piece by piece she must
Redistribute me past the green meadows
Under a golden sun, back past a young
Earth, a younger day, into a brand new
Way that you can't imagine. What kind
Of reincorporation declaimed from
On high could untransmit the damning
Lie?
None. None.
The witches stir the cauldron: this
World's all undone. Fair thoughts and
Happy hours attend on you.
20090610
Acts of Dissipation
20090608
Spoils of War
Several tall baskets were arrayed along the inside of the low mud wall that encircled the town. It was very hot when we rode in, and we were anxious to find water for the horses and ourselves and to continue on as soon as possible, but the baskets caught our attention. They were fashioned crudely from rather wide swatches of yellow straw or heavy flattened cornhusk or cattail, or probably some kind of cactus fiber, and they had shiny green ribbons woven in long diagonals, the same kind used for Christmas presents. The fighting was over now, and the town was very quiet. We had missed the fiesta from the previous night. Black marks from firecrackers still marked the hard-packed road. Some of the baskets had lids fashioned of the same material, but they bulged thickly with their contents, and several of the lids were tucked in between baskets or else had fallen off, or been blown away by random gusts of the scorching breezes so common to these parts. You knew from the smell what they contained before your eyes picked out the details in the dark shadows from the wall. They were curved and dirty things, brown and black. They must only be storing them here for a few days, I thought, before distributing them to the rest of the villages, these baskets overloaded with hands and feet taken in battle from the enemies of the tribe.
We found a trough and let the horses drink deeply. There was a slow-moving stream nearby where we filled our skins, not saying anything to each other. There was nothing to say. A few of the dark-eyed children were there, staring at us silently from behind the great cottonwoods. We were there less than ten minutes, and then we were gone again, riding back into the trackless desert.
20090604
4 x 4 Grid, 1 to 15
This body,
Cut up into large squares
Like brownies
That are readily stacked
And stored
In heavy brown cardboard
Boxes, like
Blocks of hard cracked golden-brown
Velveeta cheese,
Reassembled at the destination, or
Every morning
Anew, not unlike those clicking
Number puzzles,
Trying to rediscover the
Integer sequence,
But there's always that final
Dissatisfying hole
Where the last piece remains
Forever missing.