Fanfare for the Artillery God
I. Am. The piston.
Run famine fingers through pools of molten lead vomit
that pooled lazily from one hundred toothless mouths
I. Am. The piston that pounds cities to dust.
Shoulder deep in offal
Pull out my shrapnel, pull out my uranium!
I. Am. The piston that flattens farmlands into minefields.
Pull out my metallic womb for my radioactive
Human savior!
I. Am. The piston that cracks the Earth’s core.
For I am the factory born of the factory and my guts
roar and clank and spark.
I. Am. The piston that pounds holes in ozone girls.
I’ll peel back my skin as a favor and show off my flawless
stainless steel cheek bones,
polished with marrow and plasma.
I. Am. The piston that punctures the sky rolled up like a scroll
Watch the iron,
rich blood pump to the mechanistic beating!
I. Am. The piston.
Methane Genesis
I grow in a sewer
Mice crawled through my hair and
methane
wrapped me up in a rotten egg blanket every
second I kept my eyes open.
Traveling through that sewer but my
foggy mind played tricks on me
from my mother.
Wandering up those tunnels and
never
recall light!
Keep searching for my mother
when she was playing tricks on me
How strongly
did I shove myself through those holes underground?
How long did
I crawl through the damp muck and pulled at my sticky
umbilical cord and thrash and scream
at light.
The Vertical Interrogation of the Lotus Eater
The flesh and blood
carries a name like
an affectionately endearing pet name for a trash can
emerged from the Midwest.
Heartland? Land of
stolen kidneys waking up in an ice bath.
I stepped out of the zygote soup of sperm and ovum
and I really need a shower. But I’m all hairy chested
v-shaped GI Joe even still,
I’m impenetrable mouthless armor instead
and I sweat salty tears.
I came from where you came from
Out of the pink frilly perfume jungle!
Mistakes laugh for years at me
I can’t hear them lust at me.
I cut off my juiced up lips too.
Liquids molding my form to my box
around me, I’m a cushy sweet oval as I am a two armed
limp legged animal.
Poof is my birth instantaneously meaningless
like the woman that used a masculine joke
for an umbrella in a hail storm.
Caligula Arrives
Escape, run, down the
Rhine,
Sharp spear points, mechanically
thrusting, pounding longswords at your back.
Wisp of blackened air belches from
your nostrils.
On the pockmarked, on the scarred
backs,
those that live
awake, trapped
under the weight of smoke.
Blow without a sound, cooler in the catacomb caves with
no sunlight.
Coiling around ashen faces,
Ashes that run through fingers
My last grip on the world.
Drift from the fiery womb
and snuff out the fire.
Crawl along on their backs; they live
to carry,
the Viper won’t be wrenched from Earth
that was nursed by the breast of Rome,
from nymphomaniac orgies and centaur slaughter.
Step on lakes of toes and
then bathe in fermented copper wine.
Drift again, drift again into the smoke
Make an arm from the ashes of slave thighs we threw into the oven.
The satyr reappears!
Eyes drawn down to the bow legged nymph of
Rome, rise Tiberius,
hail Gaius Germanicus,
Hail Caesar Caligula!
