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perfect    

clear away the shining debris of the world
and stare at me with eyes cleansed by fire,
fire that I have given you all my life with no return.
I will not pretend to be a voice that speaks from beyond the grave,
subjugated by silent influences.  I want you to know
that I speak from my actual lungs, 
that these words are mine 
from the deeper flesh of my flesh,
from the present moment that already towers 
with trees and transparent blueprints.
sweep aside the threats of alien parents,
alcoholic mutters of muted lovers 
pushed past the balconies of night
and falling into orchards of superior mirth,
and let the grapes fall to the ground, 
and let the apples pound the earth receptive to every impact,
and let God laugh with joy at the sight of It's lovely daughter.
none of the old prophets with heads of premature snow
invading the season of their youth and eyes of soil 
and rock wrote about her, I write about her from my home 
deep in the air above the earth.

we have looked past the velvet branches tonight,
we have seen that the moon is burning 
and does not need another tormented image,
and seen the fences bend like rubber 
to let out their eager flocks of animals.
the sky become digital and wasted above them, 
and the orbits turn like machinery in watches.
you can walk with me, never be asked to speak, 
and wear the whole galaxy on the back of your wrist.
even if this whole planet dies, I will live on like a comet 
passing indifferently, living on in the shimmering light
that grabs that edge of a tipping goblet filled with wine, 
hanging on without hanging on.
I will be a part of the music that drapes 
the eager air like a curtain,
the whisper of earth's eagerness 
coming through the window to greet you,
to invite you out into the fire of the milk, 
the whisper knowing that something brutal 
also waits behind the curtain--
and what a relief it is to let off your clothes, 
to lay down on the curve of the hills that smoothes 
your body into communion with the ancients
and wait for entrance like an animal 
beneath a flock of old angels that it senses.

I wanted the solemn architecture of temples to dwarf me,
but the rivers of my blood descended 
through my cracked feet of plaster
and rode the walls up toward the thin oblivion of the ceiling,
where the air shines through itself, an impenetrable fog
where the face of Jesus is swum through by toothy fish.

as you stand in line in a bank, waiting for the teller's eyes 
to grasp themselves on you with recognizing fire,
the other customers become more real, 
the blood flows warm down your ankles
and you are aging, constantly, tender wrinkles around the eyes 
bringing you home to something you cannot resist, 
two eyes in a plaster of incest,
a body waiting to be repainted by a genius with a mercury tongue, 
a signature that struggles to free itself from language
on a plain of polished wood--time is hungry, time is devouring you, 
and you beg for a better master.  let the pens be dragged 
by some freshly discovered planet's gravity 
up through the ceiling to pierce and be pierced by stars 
to write an alien day that God couldn't plan into the calendar
and let it glow without a number.

do not be afraid to examine this prince of joy, 
or to find the wrinkles of misery around his eyes.
take him up to a high mountain to tempt him with the beauty of earth,
he will not resist anything that contains beauty,
and will not be ashamed of how easy he is to tempt
when the right person arrives through the fog of bitter stars
to stand him on a high cliff, and let him become a statue 
listening to music until it is time to declare constant Christmas on earth.
he is afraid that someday the silence will eat him,
he will let his name be carved in almost anything.
everything with a name hurts him and he would become music,
without a face and without eyes to look, 
a piece of the soothing air itself.

a body of granite from my own quarry,
where the workmen ached to lift her up from the walls of smitten stone, 
dragged by swift waters to be perfect for a trembling second, 
trapped in the wind of time,
is what she showed to me 
on a perfectly flat ledge that preceded the world,
and how would I have resisted her, 
a warm piece of eternally inhabited flesh
grasping me past the cold and furious neon lights,
saying goodbye every minute beneath the clanging metals,
the windchimes that electricity touches
and the incredible sadness made mechanical 
that is in the air over every city,
a repressed thought that is the desire 
to worship life in all its forms
making its way through the tender air 
like a hang-gliding demon,
a city of dreams hanging above a city of stone, 
longing to come down and invited by only a few eyes, 
and those few eyes bulging with the weight
of being the only ones that notice it.

earth is an itch, earth is an itch that comes 
in its entirety to the surface of my skin,
and the winds in the barrier's calendars 
pile up like a rainstorm of commas, 
searching my flesh, ransacking my mind for one second 
of purity that was not touched by the clocks,
the clocks that whir in the walls like wounded insects, 
incapable of speech, the pens that move by themselves
like wounds made in the ink to re-write my life
as an explosion of flesh in the vast pulsing network of a Tuesday,
a weekday that explodes into all flesh 
and dares time to resist it,
frothing in the clocks, making a high tide 
that surpasses the drag of the moon, 
a tremor in the driver's wheel
that waits like a china bowl filled with clean water 
misplaced on the highway to be smashed 
by rolling troops of tires
in the air of every midnight.

within every morning, in the impenetrable light 
that falls so powerfully on porches,
sculpted wood walked by feet that are distant to their owner, 
waiting to be burned into dust by solar heat 
and made back into the original air of creation,
my soul wants to be destroyed so that I can be quiet,

my heart is a Jerusalem invaded by masses of strangers.
some girl turns on a barstool,
throwing her body like a wrench into the world's machinery 
into the world's machinery that thinks it cannot be seen,
and she is replaced in a silent part of heaven,
machine made of raindrops,
nothing but music, music when she is alone, can reach into her.

I would not place a punctuation mark anywhere in the universe,
I knew that its expansion would shatter my need of clarity.
now she turns to give me God's logical penalties, 
the yells of people who strain to be heard over the music
cover the noise of her hips slithering inside her skirt,
and the world has been murdered
as the echo of her smells glide over the warm planet of tar 
like someone's head being smashed in with a smooth rock
and the peace that comes to them afterward.

someone flings a joke more powerful 
than every page of the Bible put together
through a microphone that ached for centuries 
to be put together in this form like flesh to transport it
and for that moment everyone leaves their drunk bodies
and descends to the core of the earth, and giggles.
we have been burned away already, the wind is filled with our ashes.
let us walk out, let us walk out onto the seething tar
where parking meters tilted by the front bumpers of drunks
chew on their coins like confused robots 
and the leaves flutter above the walkways
and paint themselves onto the canvas of the twilight sky 
like the hands of babies, caressing all of us to see with their blindness 
what we look like, and then descending through the heart
to see what we want.  in the aching air of summer I have a feeling,
that every part of our being is being thoroughly searched
recorded on the sky's quilt to become a symphony 
if we die nobly enough, for something we can actually see.

the tongues of the air are filled with television static 
and the eyes of a girl hang in it
like the mouths of a poisonous snakes mating, slithering beauty
making the floorboards of eternity sag, 
touching the hands of the clock
and peeling them away with fingers sticky 
as the surface of the sun in its infant heat,
for in this realm even the sun is an infant and even the hands,
even the hands that touch it deepest are the hands of infants,
as the coins are chewed up in the earth beneath the tar
and the leaves are printed with crooked, mistaken newspaper headlines,
crumpling themselves against the air and falling to the sidewalk
like goblets, shattering quickly in a line, 
falling like hail past a million pairs
of innocent eyes, painful in their observed descent,
infant fingers dragging the protruding spine 
of a monster that will eat the world,
infant eyes shining like pennies 
coming off the eternal printing press,
the hot metals of human flesh 
being set in their hotel molds at midnight,
dragged past the clocks from AM to PM, 
making no sound but the rustle of the sheets,
and hearing that soft rustle throughout the day,
unable to stop the nagging sound of Life in their ears,
life more abundant that no Savior has ever yet offered,

and it drops from the dome of the sky 
as if the blue paint is finally flaking off,
it punches through the green leaves like a white fire,
like a force-field of hailstones 
and puzzled, tearful frowns in a deep fog
that gods wear on their faces 
only once or twice every century.  
dry air of earth, fuck me to become warm 
and moist with life.  make your terrible home in my heart.
make the marble statues 
and their multitudes of frozen hands 
search me and rise through me, 
a geyser of boiling milk and razorblades
that can surface in the eyes
exposed to too much light at once.
let all the leaves cup and become hands
to catch the constantly falling music
and soften the blade of its blows on our heads.
heaven is too much for earth, but it has already come.

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