alternative conversation
next to my house
in a towering maple’s highest crook
I’ve wedged an empty soup can
open side angled up
with a string attached to its bottom end
tautly...
Paradise
thrumming chit-chit sprinklers hum
mistaken for operatic crickets
trilling lazy resort air
as wrinkled splayed foot reptiles
bow iguana heads like regal buddhists
slowly roaming nirvana
crossing thached pagodas
unconscious tourists...
mercy
Broken man, your fists, two blue sphinx
curled atop a frayed wool blanket
guarding what wastes beneath.
And still, that ruthless countenance
remembered from childhood…
your brute face
eyeing me...
the myth of Paradise
ninety-nine names of God in a hat
choose what you need
throw the rest back
take the God without image
God without face
distort him to service
the cause you...
Lux
Light is salutation is New York at night is a billion sparks fallen
from a heaven of stars to pulse above Harlem, Carnegie
Hall, Soho, Little...
from innocence
oh memory
childhood illusion
behind what synapse
the aroma of smoldering autumn fire
suburban side roads
softly gauzed in smoky light
children’s saturday voices
rising from yards
family raked
weekend chored to
the status...
s_a_v_t_o_ train
insatiable appetite
eats everything
kidneys
heartbeats
dreams
devours without end
flies under the radar
of patriotic flags
revolutionary anthems
licks mouths dry
where lipstick once gave beauty reign
leaves rictus grins
on exhausted faces
runs fat hands...
dreamed tao of bees
raptured in bees
that do not sting
flying within their kinetic drone
circumference of apian light
I am nectar in each leg pouch
adorned with bees
that croon green ascension
floating...
liberation
the manual said
so simple now even a housewife can do it.
Fantastic, I thought.
Let her.
***
BY NEIL BROSNAN: liberation
last rite
Sunday Christian radio
Jesus on every other station
the frequency of God
stero summoned
sermoned into farmland and suburbia
I avoid
content for now
with Lady Ga Ga
as I blow past
a...