Poem 104: In flammis

everything is  in flames, is it not
you don't have to be a Buddha, do you
to see plainly that everything
is in flames

America is a flaming head of hair

animals fall from the sky in the form of ash
children are burned
beyond their skin

my skin is also totally inflamed
my wife says my brain is inflamed
that my depression is
the predictable result
of all this burning

she is no doubt correct

beyond this

all I know is that my blood itches


perhaps you will soon also be
in flammis
and we can talk

Poem 103: No Words

Poem 102: Viral Minutes

Viral minutes
going viral
by the minute in real time
!
people leaving like leaves
going down
in TV and in
total reality
!

worlds gone wild
girls gone girls
Shit going multifacetedly literal
on the threshold
of the minute
!

Poem 101: Enter Bastard. Solus.

Wherefore base. Bastard? Base?
Spelled same:bass and bass
as in bass clef
and bass boaet

bass? bass?
which one am I saying:
one rhymes with face
while other rhymes with ass.

of course I know
it comes from the Latin
base
plus 'tard'

to be dealt with later
as in the art, or,ars, of.

I hope you're getting this.

bass plus tard: bastard
means 'begot in a saddle'

tis why I am alive:
so,
let copulation thrive

Poem 100: Danger Zone

Mesopotamian dog bones
rattle in my brain
to wait upon their silence
--it is an evil risk

you might wind up explaining heautontimoroumenos
to you mother
whatever
part of the sky
she's from

Poem 99: Recent Frog

there is no end of frogs in hell
when you find yourself in the midst of their
righteous confab
you will say to yourself what the
hell is this
but it will come out like

hubdadunubbrebleagh

then maybe you wull understond

Poem 98: Objectionable passages

translate them into latin
translate them all into LAtin
damn you

and when he had done so
the collator
of tablets
had him killed

stand by, children,
and observe
this folly is about
to redound
upon the head
of the tablet-collator
it will bury him

be silent
and watch
be patient
watch

VIGILETIS

Poem 97: Speeches in the wind

and a hot wind brought to his ears
wailing cats
and the stichomachia of dogs
and the buzzing
of citizens
complaining

Poem 96: A Gift from the Moon

a poem
made entirely
of maggots

that, the compiler conceived,
is a good beginning

an apotropaic
we can work with

Poem 95: Sha naqba imuru

The exorcist-priest Sîn-lēqi-unninni
rose before dawn
between 1300 and 1000 BCE

it was dark
but light and dark are nothing to the one
whose prayers
are heard by the Moon

the difficulty this morning
was the voices

there were too many

there were far too many

Poem 94: Lives of Kitties

Do you like kitties?
I like them
and I say this
with

a lot of
surety

very much

but so many times
they have to die
blerff
am I right

Poem 93: You Are Frightened

You are frightened
I can feel it

you are right to be afraid

foreign travel
is
a nightmare
for the chronically incurious
a

N I G H T M A R E

Poem 92: If you are hunted

If you are being hunted
Mr President
by witch-hunters

first of all, congratulations
that is pretty exciting

but you can't keep running forever
the witch-hounds when they have your scent
will not retire
until they have you hent

sucks to be a witch

but here:
you can come to Tennessee
I am way in the east
and hide in my woods
which are a right selva oscura
for the nonnes
at the back of my farm

there are mushrooms
there is a dirty spring
there are fucking weird-ass insects
that you can eat

here you can relax, be free

and you can trust me
I've been hiding witches here
for years

Poem 91: Reaper

the tips of my fingers are cut
from reaping broken glass

my eyeballs are a blur
from reaping news

my nostrils are stung
with reaping cleanser

my mouth is burned
from reaping Texas Pete

my ears are torn
with reaping Butthole Surfers

my mind's blade is glutted
from reaping america

Poem 90: Reptile House

reptile poetry must be weord
i mean weird
containing many cold images
pertaining to many a cold romance

ready to be sliced in half
at a moment's notice

few enough are the humans
who have completely mastered
reptile poetry
who have mastered the voluntary regulation
of the heart
and so modulate
gasps in the cerebral void

i have never met one

that was not eaten by birds

Poem 89: Midwife wanted

from the Greek of Hipponax


[You see I am looking for a midwife
and was just wondering]

...what umbilicus-slasher was it
you freak of nature
who washed the slime
from your writhing form?

Poem 88: Happy Mother's Day

Neo-Nazis bearing torches through the night
deep in the homeland
shadows
buried deep in the head

insist on blood or paint

in the silence from on high
luxuriate

have it

Happy Mother's Day

Poem 87: Roman Death Scan

from the Latin elegiacs of Petra Bellona Saeva, Musa Ignota 

Did you just scan my body sir
before the gods
I swear if you just scanned my body
I shall transform your carcass
into the randomest pile of sausages

and feed them back to the pigs
whence
on the day you were born
they were cut
and it will be my pleasure

in accordance with my beliefs
and opinions
and commensurately
with my competence
I will then

use what remains of your example
on your daughter
if aught of her
remains ungrabbed

and your other daughter too

plus I will go TITUS ANDRONICUS
on both your sons

and as to your concubines, o yes
I will call down the Mouse God
to click on them aright

according as whether
you just now
scanned my body

Poem 86: Let me just tell you a little bit about myself PART I

I began as a St. Edwardian crux spes unica

but soon became a Bardian dabo tibi coronam vitae

I am also a Trinitarian panta dokimazete to kalon katexete

and a Badger numen lumen

I can eat thunder

and I feel like I am on Mars

these days

because my blood is boiling

but in fact I am made completely of fire

Poem 85: storm

let it rain
let it rain all night

leaks are certain

but rain can't hurt the garbage


thunder won't frighten the dead

Poem 84: Toxic atmospherix, or 'Thanks a lot'

illiterate slobs soaring overhead
crowding channels
glutting overhead streams

their devil-talk
falls to earth
it is an irritant
but it is even a toxic return
of our own tumores, our own
blasphemous radiation

with no more altitude available to them
they swarm the outermost sphere
choked at their cognitive limit, lacking
the mere imaginative power
of space-trash, debris
which goes where zero gravity
and no humanity
shall go

the irritant has invaded
all our speech
choking off spiritus
corrupting even the incorruptible song
of mimus polyglottis
who even now
with wide-awake sarcastix, merely recites

'thanks a lot'
'thanks a lot'

Poem 83: Si fundum accedes

If you will approach the farm
the goats are vibrant, géniaux
the rabbits in their suspended rooms
     are reclining
the bees are obsessed with their projects
the hens chortle at Mr. Squeaky
     the miniature tyrant
Neo--the Catbus--is bipolar
     just recently out of his tree
Argos
is on the lookout

fireflies are on the field

the key is in the hedgehog

Poem 82: Today's word

Today's word is ONOS, gender both masculine

and feminine;

meanings:

1) ass

2) windlass, crane

3) upper millstone

all of which appear

in Bruegel's "Triumph 0f Death"

(c. 1562)

I thought of this today

and thought of  you

Poem 81: The New Tragedy

cruel chamelion-eyed king

living in the moment

while feral cats devour

the hands and feet of his children

by which we mean all his subjects

but also including his natural

and unnatural children

if he has any

he really can’t remember

the Master of Them that Know

would look askance

at our tragedy, certainly

it’s too weird

he would say, in Greek,

'That’s just too weird'

but we are, right now, at this very mo-

ment

writing the unconceived

and uncaused final chapter

of his very own Poetics

encompassing conditions unthinkable

where there is any memory

of what is tragedy

these are things which could only hatch

in a sixth, or in a seventh act

and which in all future history

no theory shall ever subtract

Now Athenians are silent

Now Dionysos is silent

and on Olympos, the Olympian gods

are incapacitated

But other gods, ones plunged

anciently in darkness--

Hell yes, they say

paint your faces

get Aechylus up

it is time

we’re going

Poem 80: Closer

joy division closer
such therapy might produce
a thousand-years result
for a mind
of sufficiently
ruinous aspect

if that mind
could be strapped to a chair
in a place
        of utter darkness

yes
if we had a chair
and a place
and a thousand years

Poem 79: Poesias

Manuel's poems
are a little warmer than mine
not as warm as Jesse's
but you know
Jesse's are not warm as all that

check out 'Elegy for a Hayrake'
and get back to me

but
be fructuous
and that in little space
death is barking over my shoulder
even now
"transparent
words that break"

POEM 78: DES SAUTS DE CABRI

IT WAS A SLUGFEST
A NOHOLDSBARDE
FRENCH EXCHANGE
OF BITCHSLAPS VERBALE
EVERYONE GOT THEIR HANDS DIRTY
SUCH A PASSE D'ARMES
IT WAS A SPARGO OF
BODYPARTS POLITICAL

I SPEWED MY COFFEE WHEN I HEARD IT WAS
A GODDAMN
POUDRE DE PERLIMPINPIN!
I KNOW I CAN RELATE

BUT WITH SUCH GALIMATIAS
Monsieur le Président
SUCH FRENCH AS YOU COMMAND WILL LET YOU
EASILY CONSTRUE
N'EST CE PAS
A TIRER VERS LA BAS
BUT OF COURSE YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS
YOU ALSO HAVE FELT THAT  PULL TOWARDS THE BOTTOM
EVERYBODY
Monsieur le Président GETS THEIR HANDS
DIRTY N'EST CE PAS

YOU ALSO IN TOTAL DARKNESS
 HAVE MADE  YOUR GOAT-LEAPS
THROUGH BRUTAL HOLES


TOUT EST

BITCHSMOKE

BÊTISE

INTOX

Poem LXXVII: Der Werwulf

Who does not know Christian Morgenstern's exquisite
werewolf poem?

If,
as the werewolf does the magister defunctus in that graveyard
 a werewolf conjured me
I hope that I could be
 one-half as helpful as he


though it is hard to know which half
if any
of the schoolmaster's werewolf-declension
the werewolf found helpful
the werewolf in taking his leave showed gratitude
and decency

such are the dark continuities
between the wer and the wolf
the singular and the plural
such
as the pale scholar must have reflected
is life's
lycanthropic amphibology

and death's

Poem LXXVI: On Tragic Duties

If you learn that your daddy is a dirty fungoid
Vampire, you will have, alas,
A brief while only in which to mourn.
Now, before your eyes, a tragic law asserts itself.
Knowing, itself, imposes hard necessity, but clarity too,
As to what it is you now must do.

Poem LXXV: Spargo for the May Queen

you may live with fuckos and asswipes
but today
you have been made magical
yours is the laurel crown

for the full glory of its term
until it wither and wilt
wear it
continually
even in its season of decay
when it is buzzing with flies

then fling it away
to be fought over
by fungoid inmates
as their peaceful demonstrations devolve
into chaos

that diadem is  unretrievable

but then your head will be free
from such
concerns