Isidore, They Came To Claim You

there were songs that enveloped you
rose up like a hungover longshoreman
like hallucinations
black and crystal clear
muddled intent with an impassioned sneer
to privatize reason, kick you into season
he brings all the sea serpents
the old jealous gods
and invents
purpose

all these green fields
are full of monsters and feelings
stored deep in old memory
walk down the end of the worn streets
where the ocean is undefined
hides behind strategy
and leading to the untethered ends
it alludes to itself in long black feathery planks
that disappear beneath waves
like saints burned alive
tied to trees
pruned for tools
that despise and kill witches
the obsolete and the sublime and
the sisters that hid the unknowable
behind sheet of plaster and quicklime
the iridescent hills were full of flashing idols
private visions and pervasive transgressions
mountains of chemicals renamed
with a flavor and fear
you were unchallenged by not knowing
no ice shattered into clear gin warmed containers
held by heroes
belted by maps of the
galaxy Van Ellen's bet unvetted
by someone longing to
remember piously
perceptively
before the war.

Age Chloroforms All The Kingdoms

met your mother
during the war
covered in bluebells
covering the foreign reports
what kind of love and lies
we lived through
too many sets of consciousness
have passed by pictures
the last remains
of Irises, radios and Roosevelt
and what we were told
were better days.
now we're pointed towards the exits
told to sell lightning to skeptics
like everyone whose
gets thrown to the sea.

To Dream of Impossible Shipwrecks

staccato and terse
the head is hung up
love goes in reverse
painted door stripped
to be hung out to dry
left out in the rain
left outside the
lighting rays
the days of indoor
boxed wine retirement pain
so full of hooks
can't help but
be hung up
upside down
thrown around and drown
like a ragdoll
abandoned swan song
left for the prose hounds
to sing in fire
looking at
the sky

Maybe Luxury Over Confrontation

in a frozen
frame you
or some version of you
burns the house
down just to handle
some re-framing
I explained
to myself
when we were
young
and some one else
turned up
their nose at your
treasure
stranded
on a dusty shelf
luxury in a remote
paradise
vacation
attenuated to
an anti-matter world

lived inside a shield
we shared
but like all cut flowers
collected and
then dried and
neglected
I suspect
it all went wrong
when time got shorter
energy and entropy
gathered themselves
close to you
and we diminished
like sea shells tossed
over rocks to make dust
that catches light
swirling in
the waves.

That dust becomes
my companion
my words
guts chugged up
like a swarm of bees
just a breeze laid over
with fortune
in days before days
rising up like a birdless sea
constant and winding
and winds howling
screaming
jesus saves.

cut cord language pinned
to the floor seagulls hated
through ages we burn and
carry off holidays
dazzling roses and perfume
that scorches like blood
when you look at it sideways
as all madmen should
when going though
that kind of phase
swallow and swoon
laugh at carriages
draped in diaphanous
fabric that shows
through to the moon
reflected off the sea surface
without explanation
hiding on the
ceilings of caves