crescent moon
do you still trust the sun
tradition, transition
futile ignition
what have you got?

chipped teeth
and fallen ashes
free like fatal females
found on futuristic freeways

and by the light of black candles
saturday nights are sacrificed with
wine, bad horror movies,
digital music, and wild sex

i’m waiting for a serpent tongue
kill me in the name of
art, like childhood dreams
dashed against the rocks of servility

what happened to hairspray,
roller skates, and rock n roll
the best remember
black and white television sets
and record players raving in reverse

fast turtles
and slow sneakers
follow the piano
down the street
as winter losers drain green beer
and play cribbage
with west-side women
holding two dollars and ten cigarettes

burn the incense
and strip the sheets
of this pathological parade
the fingers are cold
reaching for delicate, tattooed skin
and like thirteen thieves
seeking some measure of
tactile mastery
we conceal,
and eventually heal
these bizarre mythologies

could you accommodate this
grey comfort, laced with
blood poetry, and white death
from the stem of a hostel flower
i crave the fiction of science
and the ritual of obscene gestures

no submission
pray for midnight bonfires
and serial savages
dancing with insects
to the rhythm of distilled creation
in time may we appease
this conflicting syllabus