never sleeps, even when the body sleeps,

it angles over images and purrs,

incurious to deeper scrutiny,

whether vacant or in bloom—it demurs,

licking at your face at noon, as welcome

as a shriek that deadens in the middle

of a crowded room, or a suspicion

you shove to the back where pithy women

congregate to drink—they ogle you,

they know their lonely hearts on the wall

are somehow your fault (though you are obtuse,

basking like a cat on the window sill—

inert, an overheated ingénue,

still able to fool a critic or two).

at some fish-and-goose soirée) “…but I bet

your alabaster skin could sway a priest

into bed—though it breaks down, all of it,

eventually: this punch, this pickled beef,

that loud mongrel on the rug by the door

ripping the tassels with his teeth.” She winced

then turned to retrieve her hat from the floor—

and as she ascended the steps, I glimpsed

beneath her twirling dress a galaxy

spiraling about a white core. My heart

kept time with the thumping on the ceiling

after that– some drunk promoting his art

by fucking blindly in the dark, without

any Elizabethan caveats.

 

 

 

 

My love, it is a skein, a sheet drawn taught

from my elbows to my feet. We pretend

we are resilient until we are caught,

then uncover the cheeky truth: women

want and want. There’s a voice that hammers through,

an incessant beating upon the door,

that dire need for You. I tremble, I do.

Yet I would rather defer to a whore

who leaves her intentions on the divan,

who prefers to romp with the Casual Wit

than to chat with a Pious Bore in vain.

I want, too, or shall I deign to submit

I wantonly need. The rules of the game

are set, and there’s nothing more to explain.

 

 

 

 

I finally see that whether my actions

are noble or immoral, the end result

is my spiritual death. I am far too prudent

and shrewd to allow myself to be hopeful.

This is a strange and terrifying proof:

to love you is to hate myself. A judgment

written in the margins will not change this truth,

it is a tautological sentiment,

a garden variety uroborous

hidden in an a priori argument:

in choosing you, I have given up my choice.

There’s nothing left for me to do, other than

to stop analyzing what I already

know to be true, or simply to stop breathing.

 

 

 

Poetry will suffice. There is nothing

more oddly cogent than a formal verse

(other than silence, which has more beauty).

When your friends have damned your iniquities

to hell, and turned their backs to you in turn,

poetry will suffice. There is nothing

like a villanelle to assuage pity

(or bare your rage, if that’s what you prefer,

other than silence). Which has more beauty

of the two: a dandy agonizing

over a dead word– or: a woman’s curves?

Poetry will suffice. There is nothing

in the known universe or the third ring

that has greater efficacy to burn

(other than silence, which has more beauty).

When loneliness makes the uneasy peace

a guilty man might steadily endure,

poetry will suffice. There is nothing,

other than silence, which has more beauty.

 

 

To Whom it May Concern (I know not which,

since three of you presently rule Heaven):

It is I, your servant, whom you banished

from Paradise, your misbegotten son,

Asmodeus, Eblis, et cetera;

I will be brief, as you have not answered

even one of my many short dicta

(the last letter having been delivered

when Hannibal thundered across the Alps).

My icy quarters in the fourth ring

grow colder nightly, owing to your help,

which makes it more than difficult to bring

my varied concerns to your attention—

so for once, I implore you to listen. 

Charon is derelict in his duties–

he sleeps on the banks of the Acheron

when he imagines no one is looking.

Cerberus is old and often prone

to taking long naps (and one of his heads

is not functioning, or so I’ve heard).

At Hell’s entrance, we’ve run out of hornets,

and the Titans flatly refuse to guard

the ninth circle until they are paid.

Also, the river of blood has congealed

and the great wall of Dis is in a state

of disrepair. I must also appeal

to your mercy, for I have bursitis

from standing so long in Lake Cocytus.

To wit, I am feeling a bit restless

and must remind you of my position.

I have been working this thankless business

forever: I deflowered the gardens

of Eden and Gethsemane, then paved

the Way of Sorrow; I drove Nero mad

until he joyfully set Rome ablaze;

I gifted the legions their zeal for blood,

then sealed the zealots’ fate at Masada;

with but a breath, I unleashed the Plague;

and I honed every skill of Torquemada,

the most inventive friar in Spain.

While my curriculum vitae is vast,

I’ve saved this point of contention for last:

It was I, not you, who caused the Great Flood.

My crowning achievement was cleverly

struck from those ledgers written in blood,

kept in your Celestial Registry.

I demand, forthwith, you address this error —

before the next millennium begins.

Otherwise, I may contrive some terror

hitherto spared from the annals of men.

Unfairly, the living in their naiveté

credit your hand for their misery

each time I mount a calamitous display —

yet I get saddled with Sloth, Wrath, Envy,

Pride, Avarice — and other trifles

your acolytes inscribed in the Bible.

But I digress. The soul that you sent down—

along with that surly shade, Virgil—

was civil enough, and so, I found

a serviceable courier for this epistle

and granted him safe passage to that end.

While we prefer to torture the guilty,

not those hell-bent on their own ruin,

we will receive him back accordingly,

for there’s always a home for the willing

in the hallowed, if not broken, circles

which you mysteriously built for me—

and since we’re shorthanded, his clerical skills

could save us from eons of paperwork.

Yours in all Perdition — Lucifer.

apostrophe, I’m channeling Whitman—

he says that his atoms are rushing through

the veins of another revolution,

he’s quickly assimilating into

phosphor dots, trying to form a sincere

face– he is easing through our labyrinth

with a new heart, pulsing in the cursors

in a remote chat room at the first hint

of the apocalypse—now the future

is pixelating into his beard, his

singing hushed:  A million Trojan horses

on the horizon are circling the skies—

beware the dark dreams spinning above you,

beware the dark dreams spinning above you.

 

The rough beast does not slouch, he walks erect

while speaking at rotary club luncheons,

charity balls, and a late-night public

access channel, building his dominion.

He is pudgy, hardly a feral child

brimming with preternatural powers

(an unassuming grass-roots antichrist),

yet he has been cultivating his charm

since the advent of sin. The world won’t end

with a whimper, but with a mobile phone

ringing out the Requiem Aeternam

beneath the seat of an El Camino:

then at rest stop near Idaho Falls

he’ll catch the endgame from a bathroom stall.

 

 

 

 

(Aug. 25, 2006)

When Venetia Burney first whispered that name

into her grandfather’s ear, you ceased to be

a faint albedo on photographic plates

on the furthest shoulder of our galaxy.

You were thenceforth Star of the King of the Dead,

Lord of Tartarus and its portentous rivers,

the ninth planet– destined to be neglected

by Gustav Holst and silver-winged voyagers.

More cryptic than Ganymede or Callisto,

you beguiled us with your scale and your distance,

master of the Eighth House and of Scorpio

(till The Epsom Comet cleared Venetia’s fence

and left your name swirling in her morning tea,

dissolved by earthly gavel and committee).

 

 

“Thus you shall go to the stars.”

 –Virgil

Of gamelans and pictograms I sing,

of satellites with gossamer fins

arrayed with Apollo’s flaxen rings!

With ancient hearts and minds, contained herein:

may you accept this interstellar ark

which cut the vacuum with its ivory nose

and bore its noble calyx to the dark,

a billion nights of spinning in repose

until it fell upon your alien shore.

Of the Brandenburg and glorious Fifth

I sing, Queen of the Night and Morning Star!

Like dew, you must shake the stardust from our lips–

O Melancholy Blues, O Devil Bird!

We’re resurrected with each passing word.