Fitzcarraldo
Distracted by orange barrels on the highway,
I creased my suit and taunted velocity,
I wanted to fill them with ink, but instead,
I stole copper from the jungle
To wiretap your head.
Scrying with my eyelids, pressed down like the pagans,
Neon cathedrals swam red in my vessels,
When they left me with nothing but sunburn and questions,
I studied the seismic shifts of your neck bones—
Silent, your neck will tighten a fist,
The neck is the knot where they tie off the fish,
It’s all in the flick of a teenage wrist,
Swishing in plastic,
Home from the carnival,
Two fish in the backseat,
Darting like irises.
One eye drains the tongue of a sunbeaten carnie,
A piercing she’s lolling around like an angler,
Her mouth wields jinxes for Romans and strangers,
Her mouth hides the pearl of the storm.
The other eye spins down the felt of a pool table,
The other eye sleeps in a jar on the steamship,
The other eye sleeps, while natives creep,
With heavy machetes to untether my dreams.
Septych Shock
The Seventh demon was found under rock,
They flipped it over and smelled citronella,
He’d garnished his glass with half the colony.
The Sixth was a prison hypnotist, moire spinning on his face,
Preaching Criminon from a humming projector,
He pointed a laser at Five.
The Fifth cut his lip while enjoying his drink,
He cursed gypsies for the crystal’s chip
And held a mirror to the Roma.
The Fourth was afflicted with a tic;
A record skipping in his throat,
“Hollow, hollow, hollow wood.”
The Third was a student
Of secular glossolalia,
Sessho-seki mazoku, bratan.
The Second was a dowser,
Bending unclean metals,
Until he couldn’t drown a fire.
And as they picked around the ashes,
They heard a surreptitious gnashing;
Crouching in the lint trap was the First.
The Central Artery Tunnel from Boston to Gerasenes
Mark 5 : 1-20
Bone-white scales and rabid eyes,
Tired, cassocked and disguised,
Tantalus gouged a wormhole
Flossing in his overcoat;
Hiding in the shower with his shoes on.
His ear caught someone breathing Legion,
Asleep, at bat, with several demons,
Back, he compelled Decapolis,
Dreaming in his catcher’s mitt,
Swallowtails crushed under his arm.
As they bored a highway under Shawmut,
Snaking white the heart of Boston,
Pan alone slept through The Dig;
It sounded like his chest would give out.
You get a taste for dry vermouth
When all your rooms are waiting rooms,
When the hypnotist is never in,
And your dentist plays the theremin;
Hovering over everything you’ve broken.
Then the sidewalk, it still looks the same,
But you don’t recognize two years of face
In the gutter full of cigarettes and moonlight.
Tantalus choked on thirst and blood
Thinking it was done for love,
Without thinking, he bit down
On a gloved finger.
Animals fighting in the street,
Every single night in Spring,
Every single year you act surprised.
Only Pan could sleep through everything,
Wheezing through Elysian fields,
When the maenads pressed their ears to him,
It sounded like his chest would give out.