My avid ear, my one good one,
is so uncertain what it hears
or thinks it hears, it shuts itself:
Are there echoes? Distortion?
Probes the inner air. Sound
of dust on my tongue just as
a crow caws, responds to something.

Nine Poems Stolen From Michael The Arc Angel

1.
My madness and my fear have wide
dead eyes

What looks in these eyes is the nothingness
of something I forget in blind skies

In my impenetrable night the impossible
cries out             everything crumbles

2.
Calendar of ink-black lies
I have the immortality of
a hairy-palmed poet
and all my poems have been
sent to the fat farm

So, good-bye horny bartenders!
Good-bye sweet dead dress-ups
like big cherries unsipped!
Good-bye lies! Good-bye catnaps!

3.
Infinite crotch-itch of ants
arresting the city-editions facial
hair in sewer drains
paddy-wagons rolling in fever

Columns of butt-crack mad rain
applause of soiled shrouds
funeral parlor immodesty of human parts

there's a crowd gathering up
bottles and cans of maybe
a desk-sergeant in a T-shirt
on top of a roof
waves his limp asphalt apology

4.
I lost you Josie in the wind
I count you among the dead
a vital rip-cord
between heart and mind
and default breeze

5.
I have nothing to do in this life
but wait to go to hell and burn

I will love you as I
burn down past carbon

You were relentless
a mad wind whistled
in my head
I am sick from laughing
you run from me for a better void
tearing your loins apart

Rip me up if you want
my archer-burned eyes
will always find you
on a Saturday night
by the Washington Park boathouse

6.
I am cold in the rib-cage I shake
from muddy-fathom-cardboard depths
I call out to you
with my dead engine's cry
I think I know what it is to give
birth

You strangle me like a death-rattle
I know this misery
I only smell you as you tip-toe death
You are as beautiful as fresh shot seed
Everything has a way of narrowing me

7.
Star shits the sky
a ream like death
maims

I don't want life
it's wonderful to be maimed
in the light of the day-star
and it's as warm
as a bowl of cream-of-wheat
and a shot of bourbon

8.
Something is feasting on me
with its sun-bright commerce
of lake mud and fear

Everything will fall
when the virus of desire comes near

9.
I am the last honor of the night
my love for you is like bloodied baby's
breath
I am as weak as
all weakness copulated

My love for you is like a sucking
delirium
you know how my head-gasket dies
I am the immensity of
everything coming near to you
beautiful as fratricide
my heart ruptures enormous I choke
my belly is naked to your piercing sight
now I begin!

Placed