Like Super Mario slinking through a warp pipe
To crash more than land as Tyrone Slothrop
Upon Rapunzel’s golden haystack,
Rapunzel’s golden haystack which rests
At the thorn-torn, tail-end of Gravity’s Rainbow,
I would awake paying heed to the rifle’s barrel,
The rifle’s barrel which I might have used
For a pillow’s stopgap,
Notwithstanding the silver pitchfork
That some Bowser had beetled up my ass–
Now as I limped off an Elizabethan stage
And into a small townhall where all
Were wearing the same mask.
The same mask for fear I might cough,
That is let out some nasty squall
And so plague their infamous world
Of cotton-candy clouds and merry-go-rounds
As currently the world turns like a burnt-out
Tilt-a-Whirl, biding against the same Trump card—
The same Trump card for which America’s belt–
Buckle is about to bust as we turn another corner
And pray for the next stimulus check–...

Like all those broken mirrors,
the front door that lies prone,
broken on its back, this is just
a brutal fact, sharp & gleaming
as a pair of scissors–that is
your inadequacy to live in accor-
dance, dully under the mousy cir-
cumstance of the punch-
clock, those signposts & ravine-
black arrows, which logically point
to the grave’s grinning, urinous
skull. What? You search?
At borders? For trouble spots?
Don’t you see the soul, the soul
hanging there like a tight-rope
walker as he seesaws on his
flimsy rope above crumbs
of the circus? To see exactly
what out of life’s gauzy school
of war? And again. In handcuffs.
What use is my tranquilized sense
of humor, given my feet are trembling
after how many steel nights, hooded
days in the limp courtyard for the men-
tally ill where (inside) you plead, once
more, of merely being touched by ‘a fever?’

I have come out of the naked house
Whose hours and doors
Are infinite and open and shut
As the palm of One’s hand.

I have come out of the naked house
Whose forsaken arms are the corridors
Wherein I–in coat of stained mail–
Lumber dizzily, stalking a nutshell.

I have come out of the naked house
Whose closets and attic space
Are bare yellow cavities in which

I count myself in this very ditch.
Without suitcase. The tall,
Fragile pawn of infinite space.

1. Difficult to have seen
The remembered
Deleterious pit.

2. On tomb roads
I have watched
The ludicrous
Pluck Misery’s lyre.

3. Therein, with Ruben’s care-
lessness, the corpse turned back
To gain a glimpse of bound Pro-
metheus, dragging a rhinoceros.

4. Stiff, subcutaneous man
When will you punch out
From the fallen clock
In which the rook sounds?

5. This is the river called Styx
On which every starry tomb
Verily drifts toward the stockyard

  of (*Ja*) the spirit.

6. Don’t you feel your soul floating–
That dirty, dirty, miraculous bag
Wherein all your life’s produce
(secrets & all) hath spoiled?

7. Why do I writhe (write)
Like this mouse set free
Of my own kitchen’s trap?

8...

A map in the shape
Of a kite scans over
The land it paints

Nodding to the strings
That no one sees
Though they be de-

tached–God’s hand
Nevertheless
Beats me tirelessly

That dusty Barbie Doll
Once wall-to-wall
Has been shelved
My Dove

Let’s return now
To the self
Whistling above
The old urinal

In view of Eternity
And all its polished teeth
Considering I am not

The only one tortured alone
Abominably–thinks and thinks
The attic dog in this life of fucking

Fetch.

The color of the sun rising with the crimson notes of fantasy
was the distant caw of the crow over the French hillside

where the snapshot of three clouds gathering from two half-
extinguished cigarettes, those which lying along one of Hell’s

deserted roads, claim this thought–this thought whose hand-
writing (suche nicht nach Wahrheit oder Plausibilität) contains

our shrill, cursive lives. As while we sleep on Thursday, dream-
ing of Wednesday’s rain, we are somewhere possibly else: dis-

solving on Tuesday, on Friday (in jedem Moment), experiencing
a week’s work with shovel and pick or pick and shovel, turning in-

definite(s) into so-called [sic] definite(s). Thus, it (diese Zukunft)
is unearthed, our world (etwas seltsamer und damit am reinsten)

is brought shakenly forth by our deepest desires, our deepest fear,
which (im Gegenzug), realized by one generation, exists only...

You think you are reading these words,
that on paper you are seeing these marks

for how and why like a moth your worries
steer bibulous–beneath weary, eyesore

light where you think you are sitting, smoking,
thinking for the moment that you, Mr. Bones–

chalk-dry, incurable, phlemagtic are roiling,
brabbling, braining, thinking you are nowhere–

Henry again, blue-capped, bird-like, anemious
in the mouth of the rat: the sycophantic, servile,

groveling protector of dead, erstwhile books
wherein Ex ungue leonem., we may judge

the lion from its annelidous claw: I wake
and watch the repugnant pugilist of mirrors,

false encyclopedias, unknown planets,
their prophesies, their pyramids, their

playing cards, in the whiteness
of leprosy, Mon siège est fait.

How did we get here?
Extinguished, bottled
Green, bolted to this
Merry-go-round that
We cannot leave.
Well, at-least for now.

Yes, the empty room
Returned. In our minds,
That’s what we’ll call our-
selves. Just for today.
On a hard bench,
Our cigarette smoke

Signaling these lousy words
for which the answer is,
how many times,
“No More.”

Well, what do you know?
The hero limped
From the prophet’s mouth
Mortal and fragile

Quivering like a mouse
Who’d been
Scorched black
By the ragged breath

Of some dragon
Go ahead
Look for yourself

There he is–running
Out of his legs
Into this empty theater

And (God have mercy)
Up my crooked spine.