Purity
The dead are painless and in pure spirit
they float, crucified, on tall matches;
cubby whispers and punctured IV bags.
Their faces suspend as orphan moons,
necroptic jackals howl at the pass

of their King Snail baring jester crowns,

jeweled lesions bare in the smile
of a stray puppet body bound
to barbed, straw crosses.

Bountiful, bruised in a starry geometry
with the sunken braille of nile claws
they paddle toward the river,
brows plucked by storefront dummies
retired by giggling dormance
with time's serrating passage
and their painted cheeks shift
in the clunky dark as stuffed eyes
of old toys in cancer wards
glazed with dust
sealed screamlessly,
frozen by time in coiled twilight.

The dead spin in blood orchards,
windmills roasting above salt by voudons
and innocence's tears shed
by the black suns on their soles,
by cholera plagues
and worm crazed summer apples,
the thirsty soil slaked by their sorrow .

Moonflowers blow in vacant sentries,
the reeds lit dimly with their gaslight,
blow the pale wind song of young consumptives
blowing paddles on the River Styx
echo the widowed nursery rhymes',
paregorics, tipplings, and the pneumatic ogatwa
through the green bottle ministry,
the jar of hobo flies

Dead holy and filled with star lice,
long and blue as fanged wheat, vital
rising in plague wheat and heavy
with the weight of joined arms
in nodding mezzos, rohypnol trinities
and nodding mezzos
the dead's eyes are gentle and loose
filled with the season's marrow
white in nostril shock,
they crawl, the circus dogs
the wet starry hounds,
panting loon musk
Their bottled tears the solvent
for the wheel squeak of
stillborn carriages
and solution a fungal vertebrae,
the solvent for sudden clowns
a trickster gods' embrace,

and the rain bled sloth
of carnival dirges:
plaga
lupus flowers, and the moon-psalm
of Helios
marking the swollen lids
a dreaming ooze putrefying from
their gentle and loose eyes
filled with a decaying season's marrow

They lie, purple and forsaken, clapping
with one free hand. Moist nights I hear them:

whisper in vulpine nocturnes
one day
your
loneliness
will extend
itself
too
far...
Pinnochio's
nose
to grow
on your face

Purity
The dead are painless and in pure spirit
they float, crucified, on matchsticks;
cubby whispers and punctured IV bags

dribble with baby hearts beating
war hymns.
Their faces suspend as orphan moons,
necrotic jackals howl at the pass

of their royal snail jester crowns,

and jeweled lesions bare in the stinky
grin of stray puppet bodies bound
to barbed, straw crosses. In the fields
trespassers are punished, nailed to oars
and spun like Goldilocks to face their stature

against the terrible sky. Bountiful, bruised

in a starry geometry with the sunken braille
of nile claws, they paddle toward the river,
brows plucked by storefront dummies
retired by night's giggling dormance
with time's serrating passage
and their painted cheeks shift
in the dark's dormance as the stuffed eyes
of old toys in cancer wards
glazed with dust
sealed screamlessly,
frozen by time in coiled twilight.

I stood alone in the October park,
watching a Russian doll family
come apart under the ice, faces cold
and slumping apart in small fractions,
a puzzle that never saw its first picture.
They came apart, one stabbing another,
bodies locked in places their small
black eyes could not see. It all took so long.

I've been told the dead spin in blood orchards,
their eyes ecstatic with the wheel's slow crush

and the dawn's distant peek, a prayer book

echoed in the Latin words which crumble

like scripts of burning opera, innocence's

tears shed by the Black Suns on their soles,

and worm crazed summer apples

the thirsty soil slaked by its sorrow .

Moonflowers blow in vacant sentries.
The reeds lit dimly with their gaslight,
blow the pale wind song of young consumptives
blowing paddles on the River Styx
to echo the widowed nursery rhymes',
paregorics, tipplings, the pneumatic ogatwa

I started going to Mass in the winter.

The monstrance raised filled with moon

and found me in the back, a pair of eyes

rolling in the dark. I whispered that
even Lazarus will die as a responsorial
psalm, eating my Host slowly.

He will be dead, holy, filled with star lice,
battered and blue as fanged wheat, vital
rising in plague wheat and heavy
with the weight of joined arms
in nodding mezzos and rohypnol trinities.
The dead's eyes are gentle and loose
filled with the season's marrow
egg white in nostril shock,
they crawl, the circus dogs
the growling hounds in perpetual pause.
Their bottled tears are the solvent
for the wheel squeak of stillborn carriages
and solution a fungal vertebrae,
the solvent for sudden clowns
for a trickster gods' embrace,
and the rain bled sloth
of carnival dirges:
plaga
lupus flowers, the moon-psalm
of Helios
marking the fiend's swollen lids
a dreaming ooze putrefying
their gentle and loose eyes
filled with the season's marrow
They lie, purple and forsaken, clapping
with one free hand. Moist nights I hear

a whisper in vulpine nocturnes
one day
your
loneliness
will extend
itself
too
far
Pinnochio's
nose
will grow
on your face
as a breadstick
eaten by rats