Highlights of a Lowlife (A Crinoline Rush Gone Autopsy Turvy)

                         i.

M     ouths around bones of warm milk sound
     out sorrowing echoes as though
black gave way to dark grey, shading
into scars dove, mauve, lavender,

& violet just to say dying
shopping malls are the new hell-bound
Roman ruins of our clueless
civilization, calendar

capsules inscribing all around
& over the black obelisk with
screaming scripture pulled underground
through walls of crashing water, sing

‘For when the art is good,’ sense drowns,
‘then the statement is wrong,’ praying

                         ii.

watch on as gods without renown
or dogma open up their cocked
sarcophagus jaws persuading
awakening in darkness for

wet invitations to workshop
my worship’s mitre in the round,
under the weight of Puritan
centuries, we will salt the earth’s

wound with the ashes of our found-
bruised egos, circumambulate
tombs floundering, fish-tailing brown-
nosed as the demon who’s waiting

in the corner of my room crowned
during sleep paralysis king,

                         iii.

among particular friends pounds
of our flesh with solitary
vices blush, pontificating
new votaries, we forever

will be beasts to whom the poets
dedicate their orgies, two hounds
whose hands abuse a trail fed by
the guttering flames of bonfires

of papers at the end pronounced
as that of empire, uninspired
dispassionate burial mound
excavations dug translating

fuck’s meaning for generations now
in awe’s masterful abatement.