SEVEN LAST WORDS

            “Riverview Park was an amusement park in Chicago, Illinois from 1904 to 1967. Aladdin’s Castle was a classic fun house with a collapsing stairway, mazes and turning barrel ” ~Wikipedia, Riverview Park (Chicago)
.
My hair is bleeding
drops of olive oil
are dripping
from a crown
of rose thorns
circling my head.

I thirst.

But I forgive them,
I forgive the father,
I forgive the mother,
I forgive the son
who cries out,

“It is finished!”

at the end,
at the beginning
of the end of days
of fallen leaves
and rising smoke
and burnt out
cigarette butts
of our end of days
of our beginning.

I forgive them

and commit my spirit
to the stone, the leaf, the door,
the entrance to Aladdin’s Fun House,
to the mill, the floss and
the fetid water mixed with wine

dripping from my forehead.

THE LOST PSALM

               ~Theme & Variation In Memory of Gertrude Stein [To be read aloud and fast, in a single breath.]

service to the lord.
service.
service to the lord.

give service,
service to the lord.

to the lord.
give service.

hallelujah.

PARSING A POEM

just repeating something,
a thing, a thought,
a punctuation mark,

(the article a)

an open vowel,
a closed eye,
a speck of dust
in the devil’s eye,

a needless repetition
of the noun, eye.

What does it get you?
Where does it get you?

Where have you gone?
.

A BLACK PLAGUE MEMENTO

ring-a-ding-ding.

bring out your dead,
your dead and your dying.
your useless and wasted remains.

a man, a woman, a child.

bring out the dead,
the plague of your houses,
the doom of your dreams.

God’s offal.

Bring out the dead.
Bring out the dying.
Bring out the offal.

God’s offal.
His offal.

SCRYING

the mirror speaks.
it spoke.
and speaks again

and then
moves on.

moves at the speed
of darkness into light,
lightness into dark,
and all points in between.
the darkness and the light,

the inside and the out

of yesterday, today, tomorrow
creeping past the obsidian surface
we see before us

in the darkness of this room.
.

TIME & SPACE

The flying boy.
The falling spider.
The crawling eye.

We are all flying,
falling, crawling
to our place in time,

our place in space

where everything’s
a singularity of
time and space

and a black hole
in Shiva’s navel,
in Kali’s yoni

and a cracked bowl
of blood soup
she proffers

in her left hand.

Nothing is a dream.
Everything is real
in a certain point
in time and space

where the cracked bowl
in Kali’s hand
becomes the center

of a singularity.
.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF TEA PARTY

The old king
is mad at the hatter
who claws at the cakes,
at the bread and the butter.

A vulture, a dormouse,
change places with each other.

First is last, Alpha is Omega
and the dawn patrol
invades the table
set for tea at three

o’clock.

Pity the vulture, the dormouse.
Pity the mad old king
and the gluttonous hatter
eating dirt from the feet

of a one-eyed,
left-handed virgin

under the table.

ELSEWHERE, IN THE LAND OF NOD

many mountains
block our windows
block our vision

not of chaparral
or falling hawks
or the pinpoint
of a hungry raven’s eye,

but of tender leaves
trembling and about to die
the death of all things green,

both seen and unseen
by Satan’s eye
no larger than a tender grape,
no smaller than a point

of no return,
of no departure
or return,

or the hawk’s eye
and the raven’s eye
and an ill wind
from out of Eden

where the crow flies
no more,

where the serpent lies
no more,

and an old man
asks a young virgin,

“Who told you that you were naked?”

ASTROLABE

a quiet mouth,
a silent tongue,
the Feast of Saints

hanging from the branches
like bitter fruit turning sweet
by the light of the moon

(the silvery moon)

nibbling green cheese
and purple crackers
on the darker side
of nowhere, anywhere

but here.

THE PERFECT POEM

for me
would be
a blank

page.