To be a writer, you must be always in love and never in love. The paradox wasteland. Madonna, I was a grave then. I am not a saint but flesh and sometimes a fire.
“I feel so strange, as if I were living in a myth—”
“Myths are dangerous places.”
– The Green Knight, Iris Murdoch
Larkspur days I heard the Absolute
Carthage came in the thunder of ruin and rapture
She said: I dream crossed twilight
Like the drowned Phoenicians
To deeper seas of Being
I drank I burned I gathered dreams ⁂
Belladonna burning in fire-currents
Like whispering whirlpools of Charybdis
Do not leave me in this abyss where I cannot find you ✬
(The rest of Heaven was Blue) ❈
(While I was burning in azure dunes)
The commandments were stone agonies
And I witnessed
Lovely-asunder starlight ✣
Soundless spring in its savagery
Madonna Sibyl and Sorceress of the mountain tombs
She said the Womb-World was Memory in reverse
Turns of tempest in candle-carvèd darkness ✣
Lifeless Ophelia slept in the lilacs of Deadland lakes
Trenched with tears ✣
Martyr-master: the mark is of man's make ✣
Madonna the fire-Sacrificed
What an awakening, I was incarnating in the treachery of flames
Madonna had the heartbeat of the dead
The splendor of undoing, I witnessed the ruin
From gutter to god
Wake the dawn I had forgotten
The divine occupation of fire
Doomed to drown in the dark side of the bays ✣
I gazed at late Madonna rising from Lily Oblivion
She shattered into constellated fragments like earthquakes
God of the gutter in golden splendour
Graduate of the Devastations
Madonna I called
And she came
Paradox Wonders of the Wasteland
Glow glory in thunder ✣
It was a grace and a grave
The Word within a World
Madonna the Maimed
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame ✣
O and the night the night when the wind full of Worldspace gnaws at our faces ⁎
I thought it was dust
But it was Man Rising to Devastate
I woke and felt the fell of dark not day ✣
Now done darkness I wrestled with the God-storms ✣
Asato ma sad-gamaya
tamaso ma jyotir-gamaya
mrtyor-ma amrutam gamaya
Your shadow at evening rising to greet you
(What would the dark do without fevers to eat?) ✧
Sacrifice was freedom
The hanged man in a handful of dust
In Death’s dream kingdom
A population of god-devouring voids
Samsara like a Scythe of Arriving Sunlight
I could not forget the whimpering way the world ends
What would the light do without darksome devouring eyes to knife? ✧ ✣
The opiates were missing lives to hide
Always I walk into the fire and come out more alive ✦
God of the storms, That Darkness is no Door
This is the Rapture you waited for
Thou martyr-master: the mark of the beast is of man's make ✣
Madonna the Sacrificed, Maiden-god of the wastes
Pray tell me, who is your namesake?
The stars threw down their spears ✺
And watered heaven with their tears ✺
Late Madonna of the Mysteries
(The majesty!)
Darkness breeds many mirrors ⁎
Beast of the waste wood ✣
What distant deeps or skies
Lit the fire of your tempest eyes? ✺
And with fire forge your will stealing as Spring ✣
History an unwinding helix, I witnessed
The dance of the Dream-led masses down the dark mountain ✣
Oblivion’s soundless spring
It was your shadow striding behind you
In spring mornings that felt like evenings
God of the doors, I was as unmoored as Madonna of the Inferno
During her darksome devouring descent, the last lights off the black West went ✣
The Antagonist! Fell with us!
Madonna I witnessed the dizziness of the abyss
A blaze of elms and yews like burning effigies in the lost woods
House of Hades House of Dust (even in another time I say someone will remember us ✪)
I speak because I am shattered ❉
Babel feasted on languages
Bearing dark gravities
and I panicked—
Worship me
Not midsummer fields of stoic lambs turning silver in alchemical twilight among flickering fireflies a ring of fire burning through the firs ❉
alloys of moonlight ❉
Ashes to ashes after the abyss
I thought it was salvation but it was a grace and a grave
Sorrow’s springs are the same ✣
(I blamed the fault in our stars)
To flash from the flame to the flame then tower from the grace to the grace ✣
The waste! The waste! The waste!
Madonna of the tombstone roses
We were mutilated by fire-genesis
I witnessed the screams of summerfire
The revels ended, breeding the Deadlands
God of the wind under the doors
God of the bruisèd bones ✣
I wanted more I wanted more
The testimonies of splendor
and I remembered—
Madonna of the stars’ dark accessories
These were the Deadland Lily Centuries
Sirens singing the falcon’s storm-song
They astounded and then devoured souls
Madonna lived in the white towers of Oblivion
moonlight river nymphs with hymns of the abyss
Mermaid-muses in sea chapels
I wanted to sink in the existences I witnessed
Madonna of the Wastes
Burning newborn to the world Doubled-naturèd name ✣
The heaven-flung heart-fleshed maiden-furled Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame ✣
Madonna of the violent delights and the violent ends
Madonna I was a grave then (because I prayed this word: I want ✪)
(I was dreaming of you but) Dawn in her gilded raiment (woke me) ✪
God hews mountain and continent while nature’s bonfire burns on ✣
Mornings and evenings
In summer and autumn dust
Oblivion was soundless spring
From gutter to god
The occupation of fire:
flight into fragmented stars
I had forgotten
God in the gutter
Shield of strange lands, I witnessed terra firma disintegrating
The core of Earth as hollow as drowned Ophelia’s lidless eyes
A lantern of dawn moved along the night, birthing a myriad worlds ✣
with all down darkness wide wading light ✣
„Was wirst du tun, Gott, wenn ich sterbe?“ ⁎
Madonna of the labyrinths was crucified in fire
A fragile thing, she was lily-veined like undone Eternity
Immortal Virgin in the miasma
Rising with that ruin, fire!
Madonna Sibyl-Sorceress-Saint of winter’s wheeling fire
Before the dream of death, Burial of the Living
Graduate of the Devastations
Madonna I called
And she came
I witnessed fear in a handful of summer dust
Summer as an alleyway of bones
It was oblivion I stole as soundless spring
Madonna of the wounded gods gospel, she rose in a shadow-storm
Your hyacinth girl in fire fragments like the garish stars
Moonlight river nymphs with hymns of the abyss
Madonna the foghorn moon is no door
Be a dayspring to the dimness of us ✣
Madonna Dame at our door Drowned ✣
Desire the heaven-haven of Reward ✣
I wanted more I wanted more
Devastation Desire breeding the Deadlands
Madonna doubted that the stars are shifting fire
The splendours of god were testimonies I witnessed
A scavenger of Deadland lilacs
These were the obituaries of springs
and I panicked—
Shrine nightingales singing in the Decay
Upon the shores of Ruin I sailed to fragmented wastes
I witnessed the shores of soundless spring
Blind Tiresias tightroping the ravines of oblivion
Woe world-sorrow, the mind has mountains and mountains ✣
Belladonna Lady of the Red Rocks, I slept under obsidian moons
While the fire of winter led to soundless spring
Madonna of the redrock shadow canyons
Like the Wasteland, the Immortal Virgin was in fragments
She rose and spoke with desire’s honey poison hive
The soul filled with the fire that is moonlight ❉
Your pearlèd eyes sent me to burning Carthage
On the barge of blind Tiresias
I witnessed wine-dark sunken seas
Then the hornèd Gates of Dawn opened for me
A night without ships foghorns calling into walled cloud
and you still alive drawn to the light as if it were a fire kept by monks ✿
to be eaten to be divided (by Memory and Desire) to be drunk
(dark barges drifting with turning tides in wine-dark nights)
These were testimonies of the hyacinth girl:
There was wind under Oblivion’s doors
White fiery whirlwinds of light
Every prison of desire is a palace of light
Lord, from a match you never lit, such fire ˚.⋆
Madonna of the incoherences
A prophetess towered in the tumult ✣
Seal of seraph-arrival ✣
Of so many soundless springs
We were driven to extinction
Every murmuring summer was lamentation
The living Virgin dissembled in a death-dream
Lady of Silences
After all things occurred to me, the void occurred to me ❉
In the sterile exile of Eternity, the Deadland lily was defiled
Madonna I called and Madonna she kept arriving—
God burdened us with bruisèd bones
And the mother moons brought storms
During soundless oblivion spring
Go toward the light always, be without ships ✿
And I witnessed flowering Judas in the summer dust
Like judges burning the Blood of the Lamb
Madonna of the Arcane Ages, pharaoh graves circled by carrion crows
What shall we do in the day-graves, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow?
I called the dark Madonna and ecstatic the dark Madonna came—
Ruin and Rapture
Like a shore of soundless oblivion
Cruel summerfall I desired killing spring
Goldengrove season of gash gold-vermillion ✣
Belladonna Lady of the Rocks
Burning sunrise with her rosy fingers of light
Witness the whirlwinds of Oblivion
The Wasteland was a Wreckage of Angels devouring gods
Madonna the world-arsonist
Madonna I was a void and a vortex
Wanting the Gates of Dawn
I was drinking silent spring rains like dark God roots
In the dull furnace of summerfall, Madonna the Immortal remained mute
Madonna of the revolving worlds of Memory
Madonna of the midnight polyphonies
Awakening in cathedral hearts
I listened to voices of the holy-blood-drowned
Like the outcrying of torched oaks
Madonna the frosted corpse in winter wildwoods
Shivering like Sylvan Ophelia beneath lidless black lakes
The infinity of suffering at the bruise of shadowed daybreak
Madonna of the god-sarcophagus, dark as throat caverns
Hierophant of nightfall, she was metamorphosed by madness
Levantine lamps in the marshèd darkness
We dream we are rooted in earth—Dust! ✣
(Even in another time I say someone will remember us ✪)
Madonna of the Miracles, she obliterated Oblivion
Saint of Winter’s Fire, she was Miriam of the dead mountain mouths
My life still strains me like hanging from the viscous eyelids of night
Blackfall ascension the day descends into dark
Horn of the hours, the angels transited to everlasting twilight
(What was the feast that followed the night?) ✣
(I am without fire, my marrow is ash) ⁂
(I long and I long and I seek after) ✪
(What by your measure is the heaven of Desire?) ✣
Buried beneath the shroud of sunlight I died in Decay
Beauty the unbearable
Madonna, du läufst wie ein Rudel leuchtender Hirsche,
und ich bin dunkel; ich bin Wald ⁎
The Wasteland was a fire plain
Kingdom of burning sunlight
Like a merchant of hostage heavens
I stole from the Druid twilight
Beauty was unbearable Wasteland
These were the failures of silent spring:
I was still here, witnessing
Demon hordes on the misty-mantled night horizons
I burned, I pined, I perished in desire’s limbs ✻
The moon was blooming corpses at twilight
Every soundless spring oblivion I tried to die
Hornèd hours like the hooded man I was hanging
Rebirth of salvific spring
A savage season imitating fire plains
You know nothing you see nothing you remember nothing
I am an Unreal City that does not want to surrender ⁂
—beseige me, Beauty the unbearable Wasteland
I transited twilight
Existence, the Jeweled dream-crossing
Abundant as cornucopias with first disobedience figs
This was the kingdom of burning sunlight
Madonna came and Madonna she kept arriving
Defrauded of delight, it was Desire like a fire plain
In genocidal paradise, the Gate of the garden-god
Afraid of beholding the revolving worlds
Madonna I was a ruin of wings
These were the failures of silent spring:
that I was still here witnessing Carthage burning
We were wingbeat prisoners of twilight
Liminal as the birds
Oblivion splintered cruel spring
Belladonna Lady of the Rocks was burning in the night rains
„Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn,
daß er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird.
Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst,
blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.“
O Brave New World, The Word was Vapour beneath the storm moons ✻
And then a million Oblivions rose!
A heroine on a burnished throne
I was a solitude like Madonna of the Rocks
Ecstatic Carthage came burning in fire-currents
the spin and spin of light the whirring of it light in search of the lost
there since the era of fire ✿
Desire exiled in Paradise
Behind the Time veil
In the midnight rains
Madonna I called and she came
Mary Maia Miriam Mut Madre Mère Mother pray for us pray for us dark Mary Mary mère mer this is the nightmare this is the dark horse this is Mary Maia Mut Mutter this is Gaia˚
I desire the things which will destroy me ✧
This is the way the world ends—desire sentences me
For a Muse of Fire that would ascend ✻
Madonna the Martyr of Carthage
Burning with what I wanted
The desires I tried to kill
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God ✧
Madonna of the golden worlds with shut doors
I resurrected my second self
She was afraid of sentencing herself
I spoke only to angels in the language of the unreal ❉
Forests Bridges spanning luminous voids, the sun awakening above the dream-darkening land ⁎
I was a wingbeat prisoner of the liminal
The thunder said „At vove er at miste fodfæstet et kort øjeblik.
Ikke at vove er at miste sig selv.“ ☼
To burning Carthage then I came
Like Madonna of the Rocks
Burning burning burning burning
and I sought— (to become the Fire Sermon)
ॐ भूर्भुवः स्वः
तत्सवितुर्वरेण्यं
भर्गो देवस्य धीमहि
धियो यो नः प्रचोदयात् ॥ ☽
the lazy reference list: louse gluck ❉; ts eliot (groan) ; the upanishads; the gayatri mantra ☽; nietzsche; shakes-a-spear ✻; sylvia plath ✧; rainer maria rilke ⁎ ; gerard manley hopkins ✣; ˚.⋆ ilya kaminsky; H.D. The Gift˚, anaïs nin ✦, hélène cixous ⁂, edgar allan poe ❈, emily brontë ✬; søren kierkegaard ☼ (to dare is to lose one's footing for a brief moment. not to dare is to lose oneself); the lady Sappho ✪ (translated by anne carson); william blake ✺; carolyn forché ✿; my homeboy homer
The Confusion
“Coherence is mutilation. I want disorder,” Clarice Lispector
I was in the Confusion and through with it
We were dandelions drifting through winds
and I witnessed origins as ends—
Like lambs lost in bladed marsh meadows
I dreamt the devastation lions were behind us
Desire was ruination, stars arrayed in black sea graves
Ungovernable usurper of breathing heaven
I was an apprentice of light before descending into desire
Ravished by delight's radiant wings
Epochs of undoing, the liminal night horizons were moving towards me
Settlements of vermillion fire in night cities liquidated into light
Fire-scripture written by discarded deities
The testimonies! of breathing Heaven!
Incomprehensible as the origins of life
Madonna of the sacred absences
Being was the achievement of light
I was the shadow cast by clawing dark
We were storm-wracked like winter night ships
Sepia twilight dissipated in the mist
Immovable as the lodestone of the Artifact Universe
Foucault’s pendulum in the wellsprings of light
Desire burned like devastation in me
If it was the origin of life, why did it feel like dying?
Eunuch of the burning bush
Heaven’s creatures steered to the hungering abyss
and I tried to forget—
and I witnessed-
Beasts roaming gilded glass seas
Will-o’-the-wisps haunting marshes of ribcaged darkness
Rib-cage Genesis, we were possessed
Sepia twilight dissipated into mist
I was an artifact of the light
Transfiguring tragedy into triumph
Shivering firelight married heaven and earth
What a beckoning doom—
The Confusion
I was on the brink of night-ridged dreams
It was desire like an invitation to undoing
The highest form of love is longing
And I wanted you haunting me
Desire was ruination
Charon of the clarion nightfall, ferrying abysses
Wasting days in the dark wellsprings of dreams
I witnessed—
The Looking Glass
I have nothing except my writing. That is why I write like wildfire. Still, I aspire to be more of a grace than a grave (of wanting).
iPhone notes: “That's it. I'm bringing a fog machine to the garage where I write. I'm tired of not being able to control the vibes of the universe.”
Liminality
Madonna of the Machines
I became a writer because I was incapable of traditional survival techniques. Equally as I was in love (with the world) I was terrified (of the world). To do what I’ve done, you have to hate yourself immensely. Desire burned like devastation in me? In truth, maybe I didn’t want anything. That is another horror. It is insensible for me to overdose on medications and spend the following weeks imbibing organic juice and wheatgrass shots as if they are ambrosial drops while smoking under starlight. My wellness era. This is what it is like to be a poet: you are lying down half-unconscious when the fragment telekinetic void rises into your mind-universe. Madonna the world-arsonist
I was void and vortex of the labyrinth-abyss
(now all done darkness)
yes I witnessed the late Madonna
torched like matchsticks
As usual, I have adamantly refused to share my writing ☺
Night of the Hunter
“To be gorgeous, you must first be seen, but to be seen allows you to be hunted.”
On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Ocean Vuong
The Whirlwinds
I’m aware that poets are canonically supposed to be poor, but I do not want that (lol). Late twenties collapse—please clap! The Fragility is about my desire for a pool I desired that I was swimming / In the killing fields of Oblivion
Desire like a crucifixion
Madonna of matchsticks, I witnessed
Boneless Eternity breaking on the banks
The summoning! of the winds!
I died in the interstices of desire
Each shriek of sunlight strived after viper night
The Wounded War begins
There were gorgons on asphodel grounds
Holiness as husks of light
The skies were singing with lightning
Basking heaven have patience
Yes I fell dark in the days
Madonna made it her mission
To be a missile of Oblivion
I was in maniac retreat from the real
Madonna of divine and winged oblivion
Gypsy of the abyss, she rose in a guise
Then Dark decayed into Light
The vice! The vice!
Towering euphoria yes I sought it
For all the gods were in coffins
I was in the stupor of Rose Oblivion
Obliviously I fell in angels arms
The summoning! of the limbed winds!
Euphoria was an epiphany of ambrosia
I stole the blue embers of Heaven
From a night market in Samarkand
I swindled the Resurrection Fruits
I wanted War because the World was a Wound
Desire the precipice of Lucifer
My bones were bruised
While Heaven was Blue
Madonna the muse
I sought torment like an opal moon prophet
Maybe I was a hothouse orchid
the Torment!
Madonna the mime
Madonna she was a monument in time
Madonna fire-oblivion liquidated me
Madonna the lightning was singing
Madonna I dissipated with the whirlwinds
Ambrosial golden groves I sought
the Torment
The killing divinities
You had the impulses of thunder
God of the gambits
Every desolation was doorless
replenishing and infinite thirst
the Torment
like an opal moon prophet
Reviving a fragile trinity
The summoning!
of the whirlwinds!
It was a god-grave to me a grace god gave to me to waste away
Madonna of the dark accelerations
The world is a Sorrow
Night maiden of Samarkand
I danced in a parade of flames
Fire-coal Paradise after the late apocalypse
the lightning was singing
I was hidden like a wing of Oblivion
Surely there were Deities in the Whirlwind
it was fathomless how I fell dark in the days
To believe that Writing liquidated fire
Desire was a grave and a grace
like Fire From the Flint
the summoning! of liquid Oblivion!
the summoning! of the winged whirlwinds!
I was annihilated by starlight like the scarred Madonna
Devoted to the Torment
we worshipped the whirlwinds
as remnants of Chaos
From echoing hell the Hothouse Harpies revived
even fragile Eternity didn’t mind
Madonna of the blood histories
Madonna she was the red arterial universes
I made a shrine to abandoned reality
The Harpies were singing like lightning
It was desire
I summoned the winds
Madonna she was scarred by sacred annihilations
Existence was a bridle
and I witnessed
the summoning! of the winds!
the eyelids of Oblivion devoured deities
like Fire From the Flint
Paradise of fire-fall
Azure summer was Sunken like the Titanic
Night of the Transfiguration
Vampire dawn drained into daylight
Macabre as beached bodies of whales in the dark seas Membrane
I called Madonna and Madonna she came
Newborn world and I was lost in the abandoned corridors
Madonna of the bombardments
Madonna of the gored
In the Sunken guts of summer surviving nightmares
Under autumn, it was Madonna at the womb of the world
She aborted the poisoned globe
Madonna the golden mother she told me it was a ghost exorcism
Madonna of the monuments
Like the spines of night trains
The fragility!
A shrine to the sublime
Madonna she was scarred by starlight
There was a parade
In the markers of Samarkand
The red death of desire spawning heartbreak
Creation a furnace a forge a fire
Madonna the roped
Madonna she chose
The pyramidal abysses whispered like slithering serpents of the tesseracts
Desire the Pied piper with the beacons of light
The singularities were scared of me
Sunken in the impulse thunder
The storm-world bloomed with corpses
Dionysus of the perishing rites
Was dismembered with civilization in a tempest feast
It was desire like a signal-fire of Troy
Hell echoed in enigma heaven
The sibyl confided heaven’s head was mimesis creation
Aleph in nursery earth
Madonna she rode the bridled Oblivion
Desire burned like devastation in me
Desire was radiance to me
Heaven I heard
God of the Guillotine
With barbed wire barbiturates
The summoning! Of the whirlwinds!
I was a withering thing
Madonna of the abandonments
Madonna I panicked
The passion of first disobedience
Midnight the desecrations accelerated
The sundering
After summers departure
Existence was a funhouse mirror
The tesseract of Being in the Brane
What an Elysium ecstasy
Madonna she was staked by starlight
It was desire like a midnight annihilation
Madonna I called and she came
Anamnesis
It was golden oblivion we were sifting through
Withdrawing from the existences
I witnessed
kingfisher fire in Indra’s net
THE COLLAPSE!
OF THE AGES!
Fractured Madonna of the Aftermath
I was a Cathedral of Dust
a barbarian burned in the paradise flames of Gethsemane
the shadows were marauders for light
haunting the Empyrean for Heaven’s blue embers
I tried to die in the cardiac arrest night
darkfell the day was spent
She was Madonna of the Vacancies Creation
the thunderclouds were singing with Leviathan lightning
a ransom for the sacrificed king
I was unwinding into kingfisher fire
it was desire breaking Eternity
Madonna of the metropolis
it was darkness damned in the Machine Age
she was Madonna of the holograms
dark handshakes with the synthetic abyss
what a feast despair
kingfisher fire it was singing like lightning!
how vast the chained cities
she was Madonna of the territories
for a firefly interval, Deliverance from world-sorrow
I was bound to the torment
like Madonna in Nazareth drowning in Dust
the Reverences were in retreat
reigning heaven abided
the wreckage! of the events!
I was a Wilderness in Exile
Exiled
I sacrificed a veil of spring lilies
bonfire night
the worlds were ransomed and consumed
every dollhouse was a pandemonium
every godhead ornament!
Sibyl of the crypts
with transfiguration talons
the beacons of light abided like a Leviathan in the trenched Mariana
namesake Chaos summerfire burned into survival autumn
who could survive
the discontinuities
I was through with them
gods as phantom as dead nerve endings
(she was Magdalene of the ropes and rooftops)
Oblivion was white and static like the snow globe world
there were werewolves in the night winds
(she was Magdalene of the sulphur-green gas station oasis)
sealed by anvils of sacred starlight
Ash Madonna was in the acacias
she severed the snake head
and the serpent was speechless
sleepwalking Madonna of the muteness
Being was a cage of bone in acid rivers
The Reckoning!
every irreversibility
was an archaeology of stones
every ending season
spawned the bone scorpions
bound and mute Madonna
she was harnessed to the darkness
I was a fawn in fallow lands
angels of rib and cartilage
the settlements were stone
(Magdalene bore a collar of darkness)
I was a Graveyard
Madonna of the Ruin Riots
(she was Magdalene in the alleyways)
Chimeras stalked the darkness
I survived with the fire scripts
mining gilds of daylight like fools after pyrite
Madonna of the smoking factories
she liminalized the boundaries
(Magdalene was an alchemist of flesh)
Madonna tightroped Oblivion
Madonna of the Mortar Earth
alabaster antelopes roamed in the tumult
the sun was red as the chambers of heart ventricles
an atrium of unfurling skies and everything was nuclearized in the late apocalypse
that despot darkness outlived the intervals of the fireflies
storm-prophet she was Madonna of the godheads abandoned in the Hollows
famished the flesh of the flame
Madonna of the territories
witnessed the world-consumer Ouroboros
The Fragility
Louise Bourgeois Has the Day Invaded the Night, or Has the Night Invaded the Day?, no. 5 of 9, component A, from the series, What Is the Shape of This Problem? 1999
"The spiral is an attempt at controlling the chaos. It has two directions. Where do you place yourself, at the periphery or at the vortex? Beginning at the outside is the fear of losing control; the winding in is a tightening, a retreating, a compacting to the point of disappearance. Beginning at the center is affirmation, the move outward is a representation of giving, and giving up control; of trust, positive energy, of life itself. Spirals—which way to turn—represent the fragility in an open space. Fear makes the world go round." Spiral, Louise Bourgeois
Promontory
(Confinement in Universe Fissures)
Madonna of the nightmare crags
It was stabbing daylight like stalactite skies
The Vatican was Vacant
Madonna of the Rhizomes and the Recurrences
Madonna of the black wharfs
Under a shriek of skies the power lines were obelisks
Madonna of the cradle darkness
I shouted into the God Grave
Madonna was a shattered saint!
From gutter to god, smothering oblivion
Madonna of the odyssey voyages
Madonna the Maiden overcast
Madonna of the oracle offspring
Madonna she was a nocturne offering
Madonna I was a-wandering lost thing
The miracles were dissipating
Madonna of the lasting Devastations
Madonna of the drifting Rhizomes
Madonna before I was a wisdom
Madonna of the moth corridors
Madonna of the reservoirs
Madonna she was a Devourer
Axis Mundi Madonna I witnessed
The deities abdicating arsenic skies
It was an impoverishing of light
Madonna I wanted the devastations
There is devotion in Descent
Madonna of the night horizons
Madonna of the explosions
Madonna of the drowned countries
Madonna of the Mirror Singularities
Madonna of the Avalanches
Madonna of the dark Niles
Madonna creation was a sacred violence
Madonna had the prophecy of the vortex
Invalid in the infinite prison Being
She was a firefly interval
Madonna of the corpse moons
She lived in labyrinths of light, it was desire
Battered Madonna heralded the dark marches
Madonna of the Miasmas
Madonna bore the engraving of every black January
My new year wish is extinction!
Absolution Madonna of the Madhouses
Madonna of the whirlwind waters and the maelstrom jetties
She sleepwalked in the singularities
MADONNA THE FORGER IN THE NEW MOON NIGHT
MADONNA OF OBSIDIAN OBLIVION I WANTED A NEW LIFE
Wild-eyed with panic I vanished into black briars
Madonna furnished my eyelids with the fractalized dark
Madonna left a flooded world without the Ark
Madonna of the virgin wilderness she triumphed
The flint—the fire—the fever—the flood
The world was an aborted embryo
Madonna the portent bridegroom of doorless desolation
Even grief was a redemption
Madonna of the Wolfing World
Her footfalls were in carnal communion with oblivion
Madonna of the disembodied gods
The injuries! of solitudes!
Madonna of hieroglyphs and clocktowers
She was a prophet of the peripheries
Madonna of the poison hours
I said Miriam flesh is an execution
Vespers eve, night of the viper
I thought the salvation of the serpent was survival
Madonna of the Wild magics and visions
Madonna in a cauldron of Chaos
Madonna there was arsenic in the liquor skies
I wrestled with demons of the deep
Kaleidoscopic Madonna she was an absence like me
When the rest of Heaven was furnished with Blue
Madonna of the angel abandonments
Madonna, I resurrected you
Madonna of catastrophes and commotions
Madonna it was a violence she chose
The Eternal Return running into ouroboros
God was a sarcophagus
Madonna the Mimic burning in a mimicry of fire
It was desire
Madonna of vertigo and void
Madonna of the incoherences I survived
Ascension was shapeshifting
Madonna of the shadow revelations
I was on the brink haunted and animatronic
Madonna of the Machines
She shattered the sacred
Intoxicated by The Miracles
Madonna the navigator arose in a sabotage of smoke and starlight
Raiding the Maenad Darkness
Madonna split the reliquary deities in half
Madonna of the whistling apocalypse
Every dream was a resurrection
Madonna of the river spines
Madonna of the coffin gods
Pyre pilgrims surviving that Butcher of liminal Time
Madonna she beguiled the wind to die with the light
Life was a wandering fatality
Madonna of the murmuring raptures
Madonna she was starved and staked in the night’s ribcage
All the pains were fossils in the riversides
Namesake and coroner of Chaos
I witnessed a bewilderment of starlings
Madonna I was fracturing like the dark
Poisoned by killing griefs
Madonna every miracle was a crucifix
Madonna of the parading apostles I witnessed
Madonna every malady was a miracle
Madonna forgot the thousand names of God
The days darkened in scandals
Minnows suiciding in black lakes
Madonna of the mandrakes
Relentless the Earth was a wandering quake
Madonna of the fossil riversides
Madonna of the asphodels and blackberry births
All the Cathedral angels sang requiems for the kingdom of ribs
Barefoot Madonna of the ecstatic plague Nightfall
In a baptism of trees yes I revived her
Madonna was messenger of the damned
The world was quarantined into the stillness of stone
You left for the heights like wayfaring flames
In the hour of the organs the Underworld
Held Ceremonials for Cerberus
Madonna of the crashing stars
She was a vessel for vanished Eden
Firstborn doe in the dead wolf den
Abyss angels nailed to widowing fire
Even the hangman had a hallelujah
Madonna of the Storm Scriptures
Desire like a naiad on the riverbanks
Madonna they said she was speechless and she spoke
Madonna I resurrected and revived
And she rose!
Rhizome
Persephone of the Pomegranates and Persimmons
It was quaking summer winnowing me into graves
Scimitar Season the heaving earth was shaking summerfall
I witnessed the revenant of a distant deity
Eldritch ribs of the whispering night
It was desire like a railway delivering me to delight
Maybe the horizons were bloodshot
Maybe we were forgotten by the gods
I surrendered to spears of lightning in black late summer skies
They were silver and annihilating as the hilt of knives
the cicadas were screaming into summerfall
Divine Darkness
I let the wounded moon interrogate me
Captive was the pantomime corpse of God
Even the hunter murmured
Even the alchemist was mutilated by daylight this time
Siren of the Satellites
Siren of the Sargasso Sea
Tediously the worlds turn before the violence of reality
Oh the Rhizome I was dying in
I witnessed the rising tides of Paradise
Every evening was a Cargo steamer
The sinking titanic was leaving
Disordered like the deadlands lilies
Recursive and decadent Hell
Ruin—it was rising!
Ruin—it was surviving!
I was shrinking like the Pandemonium Moons
Consuming the unborn in a nocturnal shore
Rooted to the black roads I chose
I was drunk on devastation
While the furnace sun rose like a scarab of mangled dawn
Madonna of the gnawing crags of the abyss and Madonna I cannot believe I survived this the benedictions I witnessed burning and breathless on the darkness roads that I chose burning and breathless Descent wayward traveler I went
Arsenic in my Abode
Yes, I was titanic sinking in the sacred chasms
Of the late darknesses I had forgotten
Siege of disfigurements
Be my undoing
I made an abode in the Drowning World
Confession I was famished in a firefeast
Mute as the seams of ghosts
Even silence has its variances
Miriam of the Miracles
I saw the interstitial worlds slipping
Under the spellwork of sunlight
It was desire like a starved moth to the snake of streetlights
Angel and anarchist
Thought evening was a sea of glass but it was an aqueduct
All the World was Wound
And you left too soon
What a dream, famine
I was a fledgling of desire
Like the grimaced visage of a martyr with stigmata
Absinthe Twilight
What a haven desire it was a madhouse I was found in
A disorder of the insomniac mind
Some bygone bacchanal in the cicada late summer skies
Dénouement I had forgotten
The currents of aquatic darkness
There were shipwrecks on the black banks
Singing starlight
I was dying in an Asylum of harbor lights
Madonna of the Paradoxes
We were roadside deer in the Empyrean
All the miracles were vanquished
And I witnessed—
An alcove of martyrs
The divine armies had forgotten me
The Instability of the Immaculate!
It was desire we were marshaling
And desire we were sure of
Creature of the thunderheads
To me, the freeway interstates were seas
The siege!
It was a solstice and a solace to me
Madonna of the Dark Bays
Seized by the sabotage of Days
Like roadside Graves the vultures desecrated
Ceaseless and devastating ends
Summoning the God of Genesis
Ruin—it was rising!
Ruin—it was surviving!
Persephone of the Permissions
You left summer twinkling like Absinthe Twilight
It was desire windmilling light
If not Eros it was a brilliant pantomime
Again, I was seized by the Diviner devotion
Divine Darkness that I had forgotten
Even my hollow bones were masquerading as alive
Winged like bloodshed horizons
All the whale-oil worlds were going on by
It was desire that preordained our demise
Shepherd of the berserk splendours
We were mourning moons in a serenade of light
Every sunset was a red menagerie that I missed
The Chaos perished and the Chaos persisted
And I was the Catalyst
Blindfolded caryatids of many darknesses
And I witnessed dismembered dreams
Like worlds passing in front of me
Red bloodshot horizons receding on suicidal nights
Like they knew of our wounded worlds
And every sunset was stitched in sinews
And the living oblivions were homing like pigeons
Nectar of the Empyrean
Tincture for the leeching Lotus Eaters
And I was glad to drink it!
A menagerie of angels marshalled in all the darknesses I had forgotten
In the honeyed hills
It was desire pooling blood like a vertigo of moons
Wounded of my choosing
Death diviner, I witnessed
All the churning worlds ending before me
Gypsies of the Bygone Ages
It was the ancient darknesses I raided
It was desire outliving the veins of language
Even the angels were red and arterial like blood moons
Everlasting basilisks in the church bells
Echo there were a pandemonium of Angels in the Thunderclouds
Madonna was a governess of the stolen solstice
I said the Gods were Geodes in erosion
I said the Nectar of the Empyrean was a Sabbath Witch (and I feared it)
Driving on the interstate oblivion snowfield
Like a laced nightingale I was a prisoner of the Lattice
Surviving comet ice
Madonna of the speechless and the straying
I was incandescent in the Cardiac Arrest Night
Madonna of the leprostic void, replicating in Absinthe Twilight
I wanted to forget the past
But it was the past forgetting me
Boughs and boughs of resound oblivion
I made a debt to Daybreak to not forget
Catacombs of darkness in cardiac arrest
The angel armies were assembling
Already we were mortal morsels
Like a chambered nautilus from exuberant dead reefs
ARREST I WAS AWAKENED
ARCADIA I AM
ARCADIA I FELL
I endured the desecration of delight
While you were harvesting dragonflies
Even the sunbeams broke into susurrations
Madonna of the Monsoons
The churning summer storms swept me to sea
I witnessed the battalion of stags
All the Storms in their Stations
Devouring and cowering before citadels of light
Shepherd of the lonesome and lesser moons
Geode Gods flooded the moonscapes with coyotes
The soundless slaughtered were forgotten
And I was in godless obedience to unfurling oblivion
Lifeless as the white entrails of an orchid throat
Merciless private ruin
Evict me from the light
I wanted all the gods to devastate me
It was desire like the hysteria of angels
Shepherd of the solstice suns and the woven gods undone
In the creeks of irreversible Eternity
Madonna of the extinctions
Madonna of the flesh testaments
Like a talisman of the counterfeit empire
Incarcerated in a streetlight oasis
I decapitated fire-flower heads
Burning with the murder moons and the finger birch
When the smoke seasons were vestiges
Torched and godless we were forgotten
When the raving Maenad of radiator darkness cried out
Madonna was as silent as the lambs inside a wolf carcass
We migrated to beautiful oblivions like emperor butterflies
Once again, the screaming seasons were leaving me
The Tripartite-Fire God was wheeling light
I slept in an outrage of fragmented darkness
Dreaming a disaster that would outlast us like Daggers of Dusk
The infinities were gilded and distant universes
Madonna of the Maenads, twirling in Absinthe Twilight
Remember me, save me, the nymph of Ovid echoed
It was Annihilation in a Daydream
Your art is not good enough because you have not suffered enough
Surveiller et Punir
DESIRE BURNT LIKE DEVASTATION IN ME
IT WAS RADIANCE TO ME
IT WAS QUAKING IN ME
IT WAS I THAT WRESTED WITH HE
Revelation
Another dream wrested from me a wasteland as desolate as absconding Dawn I asked the Sibyl what do you want? the dark dells of Revelation she responded
Compulsions
I was always most in love with art
(being too cowardly to love much else)
and therefore I am probably impossible to seduce
That Darkness is no Door
This is the Rapture you waited for
Ruin—It was Rising
“When the face of god is gone pure transcendent sun the falling glass astonish the angels of heaven he is a jealous god and he has had them liquidated” Sylvia Plath
Sojourner, you were a beggar of the divine
It was Hubris to conjure the defiance of the gods
Rise and revival
I witnessed
Everything that was mine
Yes, the shattering of the sunshine
Yes, the absolution in a burning sepulcher
Yes, the shattering of suns as I went under
Returning to dust in the Earth furnaces
the glass of decadent Heaven
God of the Carnage
God of the Darknesses
he is a jealous god that liquidates
god of the carnal dawns
An Angel of Samarkand
Slaughtered the lambs like lace
Twisted Ithaca
with trappings of the light
It was Golden God Photosynthesis
ARCADIA I AM
ARCADIA I FELL
Heavens governance was done with us
All I want is gorgeous cappuccinos
It was like gorging on freedom
Ruin it was rising
God bore violent witness
The despair was maiming and silent
I was a bride to it
of course grief is entitled
I was dying
I was diamond ribs
The ruin—it was rising!
Gods guidance
Wanted to kill us
I witnessed
Pouring moonlight
It was desire
The brilliance! I died!
We were beggars in sepulcher dust
The devastations
Lay in wait
Everything seemed worth
Hesitation
White oblivion was singing
like the bright blades of spring
Awakening and Arriving
Ruin—it was rising!
Ruin—it was surviving!
Defiance
The brilliance! I died!
World soul you made the horizons grow
it was desire quaking in the far away places
we were fasting days
ice bound in fire nights
it was desire living like light
Like a Zephyr I outrun
An Anthology of mornings
It was fragmented apocalypse
Exult Carthage is destroyed
the eyeless sister of Patience died
I wanted life
Ruin it was rising!
Crisis and catastrophe
The mountains were echoing
merciless rebeginnings
Yes freedom was anguish
Genesis was a chamber of treasures
by the virgin glimmer of the meadows
I died
Inexhaustible
The Carnage I wanted
Inexhaustible
I was falling like Carthage
It was a torment and feast
We were mutilated by dreams
And I witnessed the carnage
Wild intoxications
it was Viscera in a Vision
Like the organs of God
My soul cracked like glass devastation
The death fires danced at night
I pretended obliteration was art
The carnage!
(I possess an inexhaustible desire to be loved)
Inexhaustible the carnage I witnessed
Genesis
It was a treasury of grief
Like a god Genesis
Life was a bestiary
The World was Void
I collapsed
That carnage
Not far from us!
Portions of eternity
Yes I fell
Inexhaustibly
The fragility
My ego was shattering
It was a treasury of grief
The sacral carnage
Book of burning
The brutality
It remembered me
The osmosis
Of grief
The carnage was a book of burning beasts
Imagine surviving this!
Madonna of nightmares ravines
All the cavernous eternities were forsaking me
Vast friezes of light it was desire
That carnage
Not far from us!
It left a scar in my heart
It was desire
I died
Inexhaustible
the carnage
I witnessed
Pearl of the earth
I was the worst
Maybe it was zephyrs drawing the dawns
Maybe the gods wanted us gone
It was charades with the fates
I wasted
At the Firesides of Eternity
I was afraid of the lightning of the seas
Seasons of decay
I wanted it staying that way
Ruin and rot
I sought the garden of god
Despair it was a planet I was chained to
A fervent eternity
it was ruined earth to me!
Sinking in the crucibles of luminous eternity
It was desire living like the shifting of the light
It was the paradox of paradise that you had to die twice
Like surviving an annihilating spring
Katabasis—ruin was rising
I conjured the defiance of the gods
That carnage was behind us
Starvation
You had the fragility of a firefly on a summerfire eve
Tarnished lily, endure the abundances
you were forgiven once
fractalized you made the divine miraculous
Testament of the evening flesh
The brutality!
You were burning dusk
With the weight of Atlas
You had the violence of the heavens
Brittle and sublime
Like a glint of firestone that Prometheus stole
The intimacy of grief
The brutality!
And I witnessed the sieves of Eternity shivering for me
You had the silences of gravesides
The evenings were bleeding
The gods weren't listening
WAVES OF HEAT AS IF FROM STAGNANT STAR FIELDS
ALL THE THINGS I WANTED WERE FAR FROM ME
The fragility's salvific wings weaponized me
Desire like a satellite of Orpheus
harvest sickle the pyres were lit
It was burning all summer
the brutality!
Zephyr of the silver winds and the silver tides
Zephyr of the silver nights
To crave and to liquidate
Desire was a grave
This is the fable to live in the darkness
you must mutate
Madonna of the free and far and fallen things
Madonna I was an apocalypse
I gravitated to collapse
Devour and devote
My lungs sank and rose
Madonna of the floods
You made the horizons glow
Starvation Sonata
To be wanted to be safe to be stable
I thought I was farther from the firefall of darkness
The years were waterlights in San Francisco steam
You kept disappearing
River and diviner
I was running out of time to die
All my ribs were diamonds
Desire like a satellite of Orpheus
harvest sickle the pyres were lit
It was burning all summer
the brutality!
I was a vanishing of the wind
Serenading eternity
You made the unsurvivable survivable grace to me
Evenings stop being gigantic
it was like I was on another planet
and I panicked!
You had the grandeur of God to me
maybe The Ages have stopped
ALIVE ONCE—THE DECADENCE!
THEN THAT DECADENCE WITNESSED US
The Fragility
Beauty in the breakdown
Look what I found
Fire in a crisis
The catastrophe, yes it rises!
The hostility of the light
in the black flats of universe
I survived the wild despairs
Lying in morbid oblivions
Lady Promethea, your gaze was God
Desire like a rose eternity
Rose in me
suburban America burning dust in daylight slums
build your evening pyres it was desire like a raving Maenad
the brilliant dying of the light it was desire
sheathing of the knives of the night it was desire
god in tripartite it was desire living like moonlight
Locust feasts berserker of eternity—
the stillness before the killing
and I witnessed—
Desire burned like devastation in me
Desire like a death to me
The Rapture!
nor could it forget me
I dissociated into Ice Eternity
with an enslavers ring
And I forgot I was there for a reason
You had the wrath of charging bulls
and the tarnishment of angels
I couldn’t stay, sowing wounds
it was desire
shackled by the blades of daylight
Cardamom coffee at Home
You had the fragility of desire
parenthesis the breath of life
who can escape!
the intoxicating darkness
the murmur of earthquakes
the fragility—she was a fragile thing
writhing in The Confusion
The Rapture! it lived on
beyond the slow stabs of darkness
the saffron waters of Babylon burned everything
an invasion flamed my veins
noble and improbable light it was desire
will you endure Heaven’s obliteration
it was desire
in a Garden of Annihilation
remembering the miracles
I panicked
THE GOD GRAZES ON
AND I SOUGHT—
desire like chained eternities
You had the winged defiance of light
Madonna of the feral sibylline seas
Madonna I heard the far things screaming
Madonna I worshipped liberty
Your Name rose from the heaving carapace of the Earth
Madonna of the Anguish I Chose
You had the warmth of eternal summer’s dark waves
The mountains were moons and I was gone
requiem for the horned bulls of Babylon
waking the blades of daylight
it was desire, wasn’t it?
and I desired that it would sentence me to freedom
the tyranny!
by the wanting rosewastes of Babylon I was gone
I was gone
Revelation
The miracles are incessant
We were creatures of the dandelion Earth
stranded skyward like stars ineluctable and far
there were Revelations razing the arms of Mount Sinai
THE EATING DECADENCE
even the mountains were wounded
it was mute purgatory
in debauched Dawn’s red peaks I was dreaming
all the meadows were pavement
Midsummer thunder was a shrine of black tides
marauding darkness
artifact of all that I wanted
the heartbreak!
moth husks it was half ash half hushed light
we bore wounds from sunrises pulsing
like the punctured murmurs of dreams
A hidden thing I was forever on the run
entropy I sought the grandeur of God that I had forgotten
soundless snowfield of Oblivion
I was sinking with the missile moons
To Lot’s wife even pillars of salt seemed epiphanies of starlight
burning oasis I was taken
by the radiance of delight
Oh god the darkness
I must once again
leave everything behind
wingless flight it was Desire like a cemetery
and I had a destiny for vanishing