The Deep Divide

I stroll upon a cloud,
a crowd of nasty daffodils
leering over the sidewalk.

Instantly I’m in silent consultation
with the heart of the heart—its red brain
rethinking me

as Paracelsian earthly elementals:
lemurs and giants, sylvesters and gnomes,

all gibbering
to chop the heads off these flowers.

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The cynosure of the mountains
writes mammoth postcards
and mails them

with hundreds of stamps affixed
that are persons repurposed,
daily cranking out

cover stories for this world,
its endless blue carpets

of cornflowers
subjugating periwinkles.

Peregrinations

Brutalism, having dispensed with decoration,
will beat you up
with its piss-stained walls of raw concrete.

The imposing hospital I visit for minor body work is,
inside,
a winding conundrum of impossible hallways to solve.

I need to be pointed in the right direction
more than once
along a daunting peregrination,

a forced loss of self in locationless space,
slouching toward procedure,
my actual whereabouts soon inscribed

on a polyp stump, knowledge for the colon only
on a day of remarkable tortuosity—
a seemingly endless route to rumored wellness.

If This Is Backwards

I stood at the corner where a car was stopped at the light,
an arm hanging from the passenger window
solidly tattooed from the wrist up.

I did not think, What a great-looking sleeve,
or Man, I should get some tats,
but what a terrific time this is to be a lout.

Naturally, I hope,
after the perturbations of life,
we die back into an unconcerned sleep.

But is this backwards?

What if our mortal hub is the slumber,
and death is the gateway to a maelstrom
of uncontrolled forces?

What if, after life,
the real dark energies of the universe batter us—
trembling, still aware—into shattered hopelessness?

It would make sense not to die.

Thus, we understand why the fat bishop of Bologna
would illegally conceal a living corpse
for over two hundred years,

dead-set against the malevolent,
infinite absence of order.

Pluto, King of the Kuiper Belt

What if our one moon,
Luna or Selene,
were suddenly five,
called Nix, Charon,
Hydra, Styx,
and Kerberos,
bequest of the King
of the Kuiper Belt?

Their names would secrete
an ill-fitting peace
over the Khyber Pass,
where Captain Alan King,
King of the Khyber Rifles,
touched the spiritus mundi
and spoke Pashto for the first time
before he was felled.

He lies at the base
of the Spin Ghar mountains,
arrayed at the focal point
of all that orbiting sky-wrack
named for beings and a river
that did not exist.

Imagine the Silk Road opens.
Imagine Soy Dream soy milk.