How to Drink from the River Lethe
do not cup your hands and sip / do not
cautiously stoop down / chest on the
banks / neck declined / tongue lapping
like Cerberus / do not ask Hades for a straw /
do not grab that Grecian urn and gulp
massive memories under / you must
Olympic dive in / mouth open in gaiety /
elixir swimming your gullet down / lungs
suffering / gills ecstatic / pink-muscle
breathing oxygen through soul-brain / to
streams of cold cerebellum hellfire / and
back / back again the clear-love shores
Poem for my Late Friend
Quail dream-runners dancing my street
to the neighbor’s car tune up its driveway
cooking in August, his regal head hugging
the front-room window’s edge, blood-lipped
but gentle, sanguine tail-twitching,
wagging the soft bed against my mother:
tear-soaked cheeks missing his snout already, grieving
his black, muscled beauty. Not strong anymore:
less a runner/sprinter now than an old man, sickly,
depleted, cancer-welt filling his left cheek
like a successful squirrel just before winter,
only his eyes stare bloodshot emptiness
down my saguaro road as he is unable to move,
invalid now. I am melted into a wax similitude
of fear, callous terror, desperately asking the silence
for help, for days spent without winding walks,
for countless missed hours of pink-tongued love,
for the simple thought of a little more time instead
of that sorrowful stillness plaguing up my chest
as his end comes after a neat trick, white as a bone.
Tonic
I take a tonic / burn.
My throat swims heat
locking flame
in a chimney safe.
Potential / energy. Laudanum
dries back up
into poison yellow acid
red, vials censored from disuse.
Father / Maker /
Creator / where have you
died off to?
No matter how far north
my dogs
climb those shining molecules:
fire! / you planted
in me
like a Satanic seed
never did but bloom. And
love, Viktor / how you
misunderstand
everything. I
creature / figure /
doppelgänger /
marauder / fiend
am a cut from you
like Eve the rib-baby / yet
still you deny
ourself: you thought
I desired
a
woman.
Rosary
Hail Mary, full of grace,
God is dead at last and thou art free.
Jerusalem is nucleus to war
and Bethlehem breathes spirits
of holy wind,
yet your power is not lost.
Woman is priest to man
and the three kings still
wander,
following their star ….