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Terminal

 

 

Wandering in the nether light of grave headlines,

Painful panoramas. The crusade defaults, the century

Turns back subverted. Your sister's best friend's girlfriend's

Secret flame had his finger slashed in a Burger King.

At midnight a shock trooper with a slightly defiled Kabbalah

Enters the Red Lounge. O steamy angels, you know what,

We're so off balance we dance to walk straight.

 

Thus one flees through Rome to Cross Purposes

In time to catch the dispatch from teeny Titan.

O Brutality, O money, O time! let me suck again

Those silver nipples, O let me

Share for a few lousy moments

Your exhaustive memory of the vacancies of Night!

 

Michael called her Aphrodite of Cafe du Mal,

She lived in a succulent

Melon seven hundred feet high. A man came

With a dagger wound still fresh, across his bloody

Cheek, but she kissed the blood. He was a refugee

From the inane kingdom of Penumbra,

She gave him soup. He stroked her cat as a violet

Light grew narrower and finally achieved that state

Where we are too thin to see.

Apocalyptic, nude

Angels fly down eternal staircases through blizzards

To the valley of rock, dank scrub and dirty calendars.

 

Lost, lush Venus, the Tower implodes, the most depraved

Spells thwarted, revised, thwarted.

The staircase collapses, at last the mirage coheres!

Infinity is made vaster. They stare into it,

And disappear.

 

Later I found myself alone in the bus terminal.

A soiled, tearful child awaits his mother,

The Queen of Hearts. And is that you, Thoth,

Standing in the Great Rubble, conjuring

Your twisted notion of divinity from that rock?

It's night time in the Central Bank.

 

Queen of Hearts, the Transamerica Building of Shoddy Thought,

Love's bounced check in hand.

"That egg yolk's the only sun you'll ever see, son."

Fractured rails, the moon's terrible sway.

 

But with a blunt exaggerated flourish the seas

Vanish with the roses. A kingdom sings a pretty lil ditty,

Something about ferns. The floor accumulates poloroids,

Tearstained encyclopaedias, Marlboro butts. THE BALL OF STEEL

Inches into view.

 

In my heart there's a shrine, and an icon of you.

The black scar, the far lake, the three earrings,

They're just clues.

We stand on a shore with no name.

Each wave speaks a name.

Each wave speaks a name.

Each wave speaks a name.

 

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