V.v

if we’re to meet again we’d meet
by the prickly pear under the red shadow –

don’t call it a dead land –
are we not devo? –

drugs won’t change you –
do you tell me all your secrets? –

and the truth you can’t handle? –

I sit in the bath on lysergic
pulling the wings off flies

putting the small black butts of their bodies
on my shaving mirror

where they form
words, we’d meet on tamped down

mud by leprous patches of dry grass
in the shadow of a dark tower –

in scribblage – running our cups along
the prisons of our ribs – grit

clinching the darkness – outside
the loop – stowing our terror

tools for the night – forgiving
what we have made, we’d meet in a dance piece

embracing through cheese cloth
called ‘Paradise’ – with a stop

watch orchestra – clusters of word
tones buzzing in the gallery –

coming and going – who knows
what new things

will be exposed? – on this unanimous night
the fashionable young

deride the importance of age – we are free –
free to dispose of our bodies – they fit

with a relief like a breath of fresh air –
like a window opening – the hot simoom –

unlike the heady Föhn
off the Panic peaks, we’d meet

in the as if – the blooded eye
of the red desert –

with blue shadows – a certain shade –
the chroma

key of lying
of forever – the same –

an endless wind through the open window
blows in wreckage upon wreckage – dust

sand grain on grain – don’t turn you head away
Angel – I can’t change you –

like a pylon connecting the provinces
to blackmarket reconstruction – all I ask is

look at what I’ve already forgiven – see

love – what I praise