get lost

a true account of my binary life
(in dreams i am a spy)

cafe bar
strangers
toss sex driven eyes
over fastened fedoras
age-old mafioso
exchange bills like butterflies, wings dipped,
glistening with sewer water; shot-gun aerated
through a wind tunnel,
a cough escapes a portal
like a pornographic flash,
a hidden camera catches,
in the background, the plundering
of eminent art.
prestige is built on the ruins of miserable faces
born of places where time has eaten away
at everything
except the living.
renewal washes up
on frothing beaches,
budding with naked breasts
accepting, like cups, the collection of
god's heavy reign.
spilling over
on the trek home, they hunch,
as tires apportion the festering filth -
quilting death
into tracks
that look like gardens
where blue-blooded ladies once tarried
in lost centuries.

and i'm
remembering everything
all at once:

what we wore,
ripped and torn; the howling dog outside your door.
roasting pigs and fancy things;
pheasants hanging in all their feathers.
ancient scents fusing forgotten thoughts with dust,
frozen and thawed now for ages,
scattered through the city's superciliary arches.
strange men, with dark skin, clutching secrets.
a train emerges from the venous plexus
washing our faces with the mucous of its movement.
out of the blue sky a connective tissue
bears a sign and we pack our bags and
head for the alleyways with baggaged blood.
darkness finds us there in hoods and capes beneath
paved foundations vibrating distant sounds of organs
and noises of voices and the shattering
of stained glass windows in churches above.
beneath the broken cracks of earth and tile
our broken hearts melt, like falling water onto nudity.
promiscuity bleeds with my naivete.
photographs obscure the untruths of everything.
books full with words.
and the flipping of pages begins.....
bald men. paranoia. yellow teeth and drunkenness.
festivals. sunshine. music. musing. men.
hash & heroin.
tumbling up bridges.
over vineyards. under dungeons of red.
narrowly evading the ephemeral memory of trees,
gnashing at my heels like wolves and ghosts and christ,
i traipse the grass and dirt and filth and sky,
knees to the ground, arse high.
and here am i,
like jacques callot's "the temptation of st. anthony",
posing nude for the stroke of his brush.
interrupted but for the purring of some plane up above.
strangled by love. untie me and find me on some
wrought iron bench with bottle of wine and
fish and cheese stench.
before me, a prostitute's thigh
hustles from in behind huge brass doors
and into a miniature car,
passing pigeons and spikes and lanterns at night.
below me unfolds the inhalation of
wine cellars and catacombs; through me,
cigarette smoke in a bathroom stall; a
boat in the fog warns an invalid dog, limping
like men with knives approaching
in the mist of the night; chasing
paper money, passports and purgatory -
highways arranging the getaway -
enter through the mountain top, to where i'll be
dining on a succulent leg of lamb
in the candle lit womb of a restaurant
tucked away, in the side of a cliff, from the present day.
its nervous cavity unearths a barrage of moistened
sex shops and red lights and
the regurgitated words
of the brothel's fraying madame.
impulses. promises. tragedy. farce.
diamonds and handcuffs
illuminate the graffiti
of a stone cold wall.
a kaleidoscope opens and closes with sadness.
a sculpture weeps in the gardens.
a fountain ferments my poetry
into a red pinot noir, veined like the aching
of my blinking eyes.
a car door slams.

and passion is driven away,
like a traitor,
trained by a vision.
true only
to the hallucinatory incisions
of night.