Babes in the Woods

He strides in airs of vague defiance.
She looks on in complete silence.
The lovers travel far
with dreams of walking among the giants.

They're in the wood, between the ways,
where shadows lie broken by sunrays
and the breeze wispers of the decadence
of fire-light nights and sleepy days.

They walk as if they dwarf the trees
and the sun shines jealously on the spot.
For they seem to him a brighter hot
even still the night may freeze.

She shivers in the darkening cold
and, stealing a bit of warmth, takes hold
of his arm
until she is wholly consoled.

The night gets darker and the way, stranger.
Still on their path they firmly stay.
They did not know the well worn way
may lead them headlong into danger.

But that they feared more than all other
things that cut and those that smother.
That they feared worse in the wild wood:
none's more than their fear of one another.

Three Regrets

I've never seen the sunrise
over the East rim of the crater,
where interstellar debris
sunk Reno City, three years
from now.

I let the world end when
I left it unattended to spend
the night with you, emptying
beer cans just so we would
have something to throw
at unsuspecting, oncoming
traffic.

And, remember that girl
that you said was too good
for me? The one with the
big eyes and the
big thighs
and you never shut up about
how she offered to make me
soup when I was hungover.
Well last night I threw her
under the N line at 47th and
Judah.
Not really, but I wish that I had.

Emergency Room Poem

The room is
sterile white,
with bright
blinding lights
that reach down with metal arms
from the wall. And the masked lunatic
sticks pins in my prick uttering something reassuring.
But the sound is unintelligible;
I hear only the slow droning of his benign tone.
"You're very lucky, you know.”
My own blood seems unusually violent.

An Essay on Religion in the Western Hemisphere

a Villanelle


Where dwells the long slumbering God?
Dozing through eternity, or
East with Cain in the land of Nod.

I spraypaint on a church facade
On the windows and every door
Where dwells the long slumbering God?

Enough reprisal, I'll maraud!
I killed the last minotaur,
East with Cain in the land of Nod.

The snake many times since been trod
Does with broken back implore,
"Where dwells the long slumbering God?"

So it is declared: jihad.
Where does the lord wage his war?
East with Cain in the land of Nod.

And, Nebuchadnezzar with his holy rod
Fucks Babylons favorite whore.
Where dwells the long slumbering God?
East with Cain in the land of Nod.

Bad

When I was younger I was myown beloved.
But I was bad to myself.

So I loved my friends and I loved their friends
but I was bad to them.

So I went to live in hermitage
but everything I didn't kill went
away.

And there was nothing.
It was good.