cold fuchsia rises like Callisto
flexing cruel and shapely talons
their heat presses in against good physics
and the blinded orbs flinch down

an end of all things dances
into Pynchon’s loving web
such that succubi only stir
for the cut of gold on water

cleavers rise and cleavers fall
blood gathers thickly on the floor
thirsty stones and dusty frogs
trapped far beneath the sky

veins rise
autumn fades
Izanami’s first drown
the Smith revives in chains
set loose on strange and hungry shores
we all fall, clicking
forming alien signs in the dark

these bloodless impressions
rising in skin
echoing in calcite drips
rolling up my throat
peter out in gapless smiles
and the traction of your hands

seven days rotting in the ditch outside of Jericho
when block on block of orphaned rock
dancing down on through the stolid air
parts flesh from sorry soul

and in the dimming light of each
comes the quake of kismet’s screams 
the ghost of your hands, your sticky tears
eliciting the last fuck that I’ll give

it rises
vast and numinous and cold
and I perceive that all the earth is of its body
its parting teeth split the horizon 
a tunnel gasping to reveal, grey and green, the tarnish
adorning millennia of men’s treasures
I see that we are small
and soon to die

it was fractured. I stood there in a pinafore, but we were rushing, running, stalled abruptly, wallowing in mud that sang with tiny krill and plastic teeth

like a ghostly host of thousands, an unfed, unwashed horde marshalled on this grey and ochre wasteland broken up by concrete cubes and dying lights. we were choking on its tracks

it slew Mother, and yet here I was Mother too, my daughter clung to me dry eyed and my womb ached bitterly with her brother, we three on the edge of the biting wire where the snake road’s debris teethed

and she tells me no, no, no fading into the wall of crying bodies I seize my child aspect in both arms and run, dying, here! here is the devil’s house, a place of slow minds, low roofed, the steaming toil of potato eaters bathed in Gogh’s loving yellow cavern light

in this place I set her down, say, be good, Mother might not come home and to stranger’s food bearing hands I leave my dry eyed value and I ascend

there is a stair of hardwood, darkwood, the flesh of my dead loves shelved like tetris bones, I think, Mother might not come home, and the clean air trickles in from somewhere hidden above

while behind rises a bestial god, raptor-toothed, fennic eared, a mantis of waltzing staccato architecture who snakes around me caressing nerves I thought were dead and mouth to mouth whispers

you are whole, darling, let me give you eyes

they peel back and I am bleeding on my back beneath a wash of moth eaten kings’ purple, laying in a nest of whitewash and filigree, boxed and broken

the lady of shallot

[draft]

if the beat were steady

or the shiver less sick

if my chin were up

or my mind more quick

should my fear subside

or the madness lift

should the spinning slow

or the shadows shift

if the sun would show

or the wind would still

if my confidence grew

or anxiety quelled

should the sky fall in

or should it open up

in stuttered breath 

and shortened steps

we’ll tangle on that 

faceless edge

eyes locked and

never leaving

contributing drafts: 1, 2

in stilted breath and shortened steps
so quick reach the cutting edge
to halt and totter on that ledge
forgive and fault
collapsing without notice

sapping tendrils flick and waver
smoke piles in a dripping cloud
and all around me droplets shatter
in a grey and chilling shroud