Bullets in the Temple (To Open Closed Minds)

Silence this ferocity,
this wilderness wintering
this feral city to full
atrocity. Buy from me
my body, blind each lover
left over after scent’s been
let out. Bloodlet and absent,
vacant louses house this now,
have no power but let on
they know what they know nothing
about. Anyhow, any
hour in these arms informs the
smut this pen puts out, snuff pinched
from lust pilfered, those borrowed
moments memory wants to
be devoured by readers.
Feast, then, on this vivid-lipped
gritty description of post-
postmodern living, poet’s

ii.

pre-apocalyptic non-
committal visionary
non-fiction, wisdom dished non-
chalant, pissed from incisions
wit scalpels into the skin
of my been-that, did-him, used-
up body’s outer-limit
experiences, opened secrets,
vain liminal lies crossing
lines trying to convince to
buy them the kind of people
I’ll never meet, not even
if they read what I write and
like it. You shouldn’t like this,
or live like it’s right to get
by this privileged. No. Let
me illustrate what you can’t
picture in your mind since it
happens to be my own life.

iii.

Sincerity is a song
every sinner denies
he sings but each has a stake
in the rights, fingers in that
pie beggars bite, hungering
for two hundred per cent in
one slice, not unlike when thin
slivers of silver beg blind
unkinder mirrors to take
off their horrible masks but
reflections boss around those
whose distorted perceptions
depend on short retorts and
snorted opinions no one
asked about, not out loud. Out
of protection but making
love like it’s going to be
out of production any-
time soon, out of style, out at

iv.

night, must be going through some-
thing, can’t just be that I dig
what I do, wanting to get
some, to come but not come un-
glued. Shield from view what one’s done
and someone soon enough comes
to conclusions when the truth
would have been more than soothing,
proving as it is, has been
since the beginning, to do
the trick, best unfiltered, no
censorship. Pick instead some
fruit yet untouched by this rot
(there is not), for taken in
unadulterated what’s
thought cannot be undone or
a sin. Word and deed feed on
polishing off nobs and robbed
Oscars for the wild, rubbing

wrongs away, defying those
who, bad actors who, in their
envious denigrations,
deign to defame, ruin, what’s
already allegèdly
profane, and aspire to mire,
to silence their inner child.
Living lies of meaning, each
deceiving everyone
else but themselves. Fools, as your
witness attests, true strength, yes,
true, consists in facing your
own abyss. Commodified
threats acquiescing to lend
relentless requests, yet these
planets of our awe’s making
are just awful stars, jarring,
and reflecting another
god’s more powerful light. Scarred,

vi.

seemingly immortal, gas-
lit relics taking their time
to arrive at mass decay,
must have skipped Mass today… Bruised
balloons inflated by prayers
none down here can say, playing
punitive orbs powerless
in their trajectories’ flight
beyond orbit toward deep-
sixed thick obituary
columns of crumbling news. Ripped
inches imprinted and stripped,
impugned in the fugue sight of
others who have gone before,
fuel for talk rocketing
to shivering fizzle all
once-chivalrous riveting
correspondences, herbal,
mineral, no ritual.

vii.

Shattering them hard into
dread oblivions of dead
magic, incense waiting to
become ink when tears hit it,
crashing into paint blatant
canvases turn to careers.
Deceiving with devious
appearances their own loss,
blinking blank demise they fear.
More musical than muscled,
confused spheres fighting over
bones more precious than jewels,
this is the end of myth, how
lies lived beget death, how love
wounds the heart with desire, how
want replenishes nothing
but emptiness thoughts fill. Gods
are just shapes with ambitions,
closing eyes to keep visions

viii.

in, ferrymen shepherding
wandering apparitions,
vanquished voices attuned to
static, translucent tunics
of white noise festooning with
dramatic anguish, slipping
in and out of life without
a fight. Complicit as night
in the blanketing of breath
with chill, mist to disturb from
being thus distilled. What verb
changes I enact first in
accordance with my will pull
at the fabric of this veil,
verses which kill as what spills
lethal from my pen fulfills
prophecy, not fantasy.
Fanciful fits of flippant
animist animosity

ix.

fed up with the crutch of
tragic apathy, each point
I describe is a point at
which one must arrive, bullets
in the temple to open
closed minds punch holes to let in
light to wake the blind. Nigh first
sighting of the divine so
often strikes one not lonely
but only alone, on knees
bleeding red light, wet neon
inviting inside heat’s twice-
divided thighs what ignites
within the dusk wilderness
cognition’s twin, consciousness.
Voice burning bushes until
you get its message, so I’ll
fire away, can’t contain this
blaze of what I want to say,

since what I make is meant to
make you think. Every hole
I kiss open, spunk, then tongue
a conduit into which
pleasurable damage of
injected sentiments can’t
be undone, no. No point in
outing one whose shout can’t be
outdone, or deafened out, by
anyone so hung up on
keeping silent what ev’ry-
one else finds in those moments
they search your face for the sign
and, behind those eyes, find your
lie. I make a mint off mine
slanting rhymes, coining cryptic,
yet infectious, choruses
enjoyed by strangers who buy
my variation of the