From the chapbook, "Indios
Verdes," Centaur Productions, San Francisco, 1998:
ENTOMBED
Unfurling a banner for
"A Butcher's Holiday"
a tin of laminated sardines
______arrive
Begging for more potash
Bela Lugosi's armpit scratches dead air
Powahatan smoking old fires in the streets
aquatic steroids
all these corrosions beneath the
shell of
my reckless heart
my heart of sliced throats
my heart of Aztec tendons
my syphilis heart of lily-headed serpents
ready to attach the creators of
The Poison Milk Factory
demon in a dressing gown
the sugar seals
a satin slipper
sputtering
the fragrance
Piss Angel
It is at this point we step into
the cyclone
To embrace here and there
Moments of the fifth dawn
Crocodile banks of the Nile float on Tenochtitlan
_____________________________highway
As I imagined polluted cities sink beneath the horizon of
crazed Empire
Ancient castles wash up on the foreheads of black rock
______________mountains
Pulling the tip of your beard with the hand of a leprechaun
Your deerhunter's cap brings to mind a scene from a
______________movie
& I am reminded it is The Saturn Return Of The Chicano
______________Movement
& I am not quite sure what this means
Having cracked the egg of hard-boiled reason
______________fever
______________light
People gather in the courtyard to watch the cobra
Marry the hawk on my head
Fat baby Caduceus, I'm through!
From the chapbook, "Mutations," Centaur Productions,
San Francisco, 1998:
BLACK TULIP
Mating in Elysian Fields horned
lions are tearing at each other. The meat of angels sliced to little
orange poison pills. Your head blossoming the steel conjunction of Mars.
Heavenly centaur, your job is to draw the star from the flower. In Siberia
iron planet Jesus walks on water. Instamatic Jesus of the last two thousand
years burnt to a crisp. Beneath the boiling waters lobsters scream for
their terrified lives. A crayfish draws a diagram of a dissected human.
All the organs labeled with a number and a planet. In a glass furnace
dolls are melting - hair, teeth, and eyes. Yahweh's mind evaporating
a thin out coating of high octane [viral loads] the image of Shiva on
a couch of tiger skins. The Orishas in the celestial vault working overtime.
TWIN EYES
E.L.T. Mesens is having supper at
Ghost Ship Tavern. Queen Victoria sits in a highback chair smoking a
ball of hashish. Her arms around her head clutching a bouquet of chrysanthemums.
Suffering from a mild case of elephantiasis. Her fat legs in a pair
of pumps. She boards the train for Constantinople.
Locked in a cattle car with an eagle
in her belly Guadalupe holds the thread that weaves the sky cobalt blue.
La Muerte ticking a rat hole beneath the mosque.
The dressing dummies nearly rioted
at the news. Noble Lady of Meir's Universal Silkworm Factory fitting
her with garments of moth-eaten lace. His Lordship combing ruby-throated
hummingbirds from his beard of burnt cement. London Tower's in high
heels. Black Mermaid on a bed of artichokes don't ask why Shakespeare
should sit on it.
