When I’m haunted

When the clock ticks thunder

When hope dies

When I long for escape

When I pray to Oblivion and observe the needle rites

When I lose reason and forsake joy

Then I wonder: When?

I'm concrete-dusted
         Sun-beaten
and tired as a slave
  from building in the Nevada summer

Her laugh enlivens me
   She's so smart it makes me hard

We wait for her son to sleep
  I hold her
  Tell her she fills my heart with light
    like a sunrise in my chest

We fuck in the bathroom
   her legs wrapped around me
      grinding away
 into the sweetest oblivion

 
 Let me flow like water sublime
           rolling over and around             
                  knowing no obstacle
                         only ever-changing possibility
              drifting with the Tao on the tides of yang and yin
           no hesitation
               cascading into void
                     carving through stone itself
       down                                             
           down                         
                 humbly flowing
             to a stillness so perfect
          the whole world, reflected, cannot mar me
                with its passage overhead 

 
 
 Breakfast

 on my knees
 sickly genuflecting
 biting a needle
 pinching a cotton
 I prepare to receive
 my daily sacrament
 communing with a false god
 omnipotent for all I know
 I pray that isn't so
 
 

Doing Dishes

This grin cracks
in the mirror
like an old plate
used too long


Ceramic teeth—jagged shards—
clatter-dance ‘round a blood-rust stain:
the drain agape and unsated—
a silent throat of slime
where a painted flower façade
finds relief in the breaking

 Kamikaze   
 
 I fly my love like a kamikaze
  grasping at divinity through reckless devotion
 knowing it always ends in flames
    and smoking ruin
 
 

If I had a lover
She'd be ethereal and free
She'd dance among the midnight sprites
And sing sacred songs to me

If I had a lover
Her beauty would mesmerize
Gleaming like the moon and stars
Bejeweled in nighted skies

If I had a lover
She'd be soft of heart and kind
At her touch the most tangled knots
Of sorrow would unwind  

If I had a lover
No longer would I grieve
For in her loving, laughing presence
At last I'd find reprieve

I love you

with all the twisted desire in my addict heart

I crave your touch like needle kisses

veins full of junk, tracks on my back

from your nails

I can’t get enough

My hands snake across your naked skin

moist, hot, rising and falling

I inhale your fragrant moans

chasing dragons down your throat

feeling bliss and finding hell in this love triangle

I can’t get enough

I’ve sworn off you.

But I know how that ends:

in the melancholy songs unsung by vibrant and contented beings

I get high, when you’re nearby

I taste violence in our wrathful exchanges

poison, jealous barbs and sexual sparring

I can’t get enough

I hug you, embrace you, try to stuff you into my darkness,

hoping to fill up the cold void in the grave of my heart,

longing for some unknown freedom I think I’ve tasted

on your lips, or from the bottle or the barrel or the pipe

You know I can’t get enough.