The second & third coming of Pompeii
The first night after the day after the day

The crocodile breaking necks
On the L the G the M the 1 the A

Emerges from the 6-train’s
77th Street gate and tick-

Tocks his way to the House of Frick
To take a nap under The Birth

of Venus like a beatnik drunk
Catching baahs beneath

The throat of a trap-
house fireplace

Dreaming of Jaws

II

The yellow barrels pop back up
With the click of ten sawed-off

Shotguns
I’ll be back

The Terminator delivers
His one badass line

Of cliche
By this time

A mental form
Of jock-itch

All the way from California
To New York Bay

III

We’re gonna need a bigger boat
Comes now as apropos

Is not what the President can say
But in hindsight of 2020’s Lasik Eye

                    Fuck 

We, the People, already know

IV

The owl peaks into Constant Troy-
on’s A Pasture in Normandy

Utterly bereft, scanning
Its...

It was kind of a fall
But more like Jonah
Tossed as javelin
Over steel joust
Of a battleship’s bow-
sprit

It was kind of a fall
I crashed as one bolt
Of plutonium
Giving birth to a sea

Wide drum pit
Where I would beat
The dropped-D tune
Of my own purple heart

My brother Michael
Had frontrow seats
For which his eyes
Developed nose-

bleed

His blood drips
On the torn flyleaf
Of a book published
Ten thousand and ten

Centuries after the fall month
He thought I was all over–
The years stack up
So does his anger:
A leaning tower of fuck

As no matter who might have
Been hired to paint and so
Frame me as Cain, the cracks
Begin to chip and (well, as mas-
cara rubs off) unveil me for Abel

II

More than able
The world slaps
The alarmclock
Back to snooze
And, Hark!–
Willingly fades
Into dementia

There’s too many dots
That they don’t want
To connect leading
To the self-same spot
Of ‘Oh No!...

You found life on Mars
By one Roman X–
The dark numen
Which might signify
A snail crawling
On straight razor’s edge

That such would magnify
If not zero in for the O-
edipal wreck of Super
Mario’s Moon Bug
Or, better yet–launching
Back to the ice-laden bones
Of myth, the cratered crashsite
Of Jupiter’s trampled space kart

II

Beneath the rapture
Of Alice’s Looking Glass
Inside a basement booked
For (yeah) the snail-like advance
Of the geologist’s geologist’s
geologist

My one rabid popeye
Would not so much plunge
But more accreditely spelunk
Into the Copernican zip drive
Nested in the silicon cache
Of one thin section of rock

III

The general’s dog drools
As it stares at the doorknob
The librarian’s cat sharpens
Her claws, picking at the lock
For the backdoor she’s proven
Already to turn by unlikely force
Of some Jedi–killing two early
Birds with one slingshot

IV

If not for the...

This is the place the end never touched
The place of dusk’s afterward first to awake

The prophet’s severed index
The prophet’s severed tongue

This is the place the end never touched
The place of the cave from whence passages

Of Milton and Bach fork
Off the pallet of the One,

Now merging into the single utterance
For which Darkness trembles for speed

Of His Light

Bent as we are over ivy hedge of space
Or bowled as gutterball to the lame ditch

  of time

That we feel quite apart is all too clear-cut
And yet like the sly head of Solomon’s fox

Rolling from desert top of Golan’s vineyard
We’ve never broken that self-same smile

Our bloodline being traced to the very block
Of Smithfield, Tyburn plus (now) the most
affordable marketplace

Inasmuch a butcher (regardless of title,
Of class) will chop and merely incenerate

The scrubs notwithstanding such warnings
From THOTH concerning the all-seeing EYE

That they don’t feel the pinch is comical
For the year ahead, as this Scorpion rises,

Will deliver their venom

The impossible wall clock
of my grandfather (Dalton)
somehow doing time
lodged in the idle hall
that runs a crooked parallel
between left and right ear
its pendulum hum serving
as sway of death’s scythe
a prelude for Lilith’s lullaby

as from my Washington Heights crib
I held my mother’s yellow frying pan
like a teddy bear snug to my breast
feeling the bird as she stirred from
hollow focal point of my bird chest
eager to dive into the sulfer-bred
gulch of (yeah yeah yeah) the ninth

demense

Looking for the point of no re-
But hang on. My blinker’s on,
Telling me, of both ways, to veer

But in this dugout
Of serendipitous slaughter
With three miles until kaput

I can already feel
The apocryphal cactus
In the left cheek
Of my generous ass

Filling my essence
With square roots
Common denominators
Tremendous splinters

Of so many unique points
But not the one I was oodling
After when, over the loud speaker

‘whomp!– whomp!–’
Hang on.
I’ve hit another rock.

More like a Jurassic wall
Straight from The Flintstones
‘So much for airbags!’
Announces the caduceus miracle

As with the fly buzz
That is the running fart
Of American recycling
It’s only in 2020’s hindsight

Licking the fine-toothed print
Off the comb: the airbag
Aimed not to deploy

In other words, “a total dud”
For which you’ll have to dream up
Something else for (umm) your beddy-

bye pillow

Meanwhile, the dragon...

Apart from the dubious success
of sealing their heads and tails
in one gold firken
that would spring for Ghostbuster trap

these two mascots
(read Mini and Mickey Mouse)
from blacker than blackout
will discover themselves sealed

and stiffly lodged
on Walmart’s top shelf
with the greedy paws
of a girl named Martha

stretching for her Walt Disney prize
which led by squeaking wheel
of her mother’s shopping cart
will elbow past checkout

into the wilds, the wilds
of one Boca Raton parking lot

Like old plowman-warrior splendid in armor
This aspiring paladin
Straight from one of Goya’s etchings
Will find himself ‘equally mad’

Ghosting the grounds of Eden
As he sets sight on Orpheus’ lyre,
Which playing itself, itself~sways
Amongst the rolling rocks & trees,

giving its gift
of solace
to the w¥£∆e animals
& slithering beast~

yeah–the slithering beast
who miraculously has (like finally)
grown himself not some balls
but a pair of arms & legs

The moon hummed
A black and tan lick
Over the reptilian hand
Of a Mr. Robert Johnson,

A Mr. Robert Johnson
Who, after his notorized spell
of rumor at the crossroads

Could pick and pick and pick
Until it’s now whittled down
and down and down to my v-

ery own chalk-enveloped
and (so crooked) pinkie finger
that being on the left
for some infinite jest of pew-

led jabs and crack-
er-barrelled jokes
this Saudi of (yeah) Solo-
mon would shift shape for
.
And just to wag his own paper
cut finger in front of his nose,
alluding to the elephant in the
that, as Paul has already brought

(well) to light, Edison once ‘prodded
and prodded and prodded’
with a silver spoon.

A silver spoon that just last year
I finally managed to spork
at the forefront of a West
Asheville truff that blazing!–

(clothes, racquets, books
and more and more juve-
nile stuff) still develops
from the ashes the multi-