Incorruptibility of the flesh for one –
roll back the rock from Golgotha 
and I walk free
in my Dolce & Gabbana shades
and lime green Crocs –
resurrection of the flash.

Poems that smash atoms
into quarks of up, down, 
crushed pistachio, and almond –
sub-atomic food particles 
washed from my teeth
by a Waterpik™ stream of words.

Then Reign of Terror poems –
potato peeler Guillotines –
OK, sure, bad bad bad, 
but also some tasty french fries 
and stanzas
from all that chopping.

Would I trade all that
for practical poems that walk the dogs 
in the cold rain like today?
Or smell like my love
in warm sheets, with coffee brewing
just now in the kitchen?

No, no mild-mannered 
Clark Kent poems. Instead – 
like inhaling Popeye's spinach –
Aztec gods that down Habanero peppers,
breathe out fire and snakes
and volcanoes.

For Desperate Poets

The Good Lord had extra bolts and screws left over
after Creation and the “Let there be light” thing –
might have skipped a step or two, left off a cover
from the Ikea Universe assembly kit, missed some springs

and glue. Oh well, the drawers and humans almost fit
but a little rickety. The angel painting crew called in
to “put some lipstick on that” and get some spit
and polish on the world. Some said “it’s a sin”

but I love the cockeyed dawn and rattletrap stars,
the bugs with too many eyes, the fish with none.
Love tipping between perfection and chaos. The diamond scars
of a world that could be gone in a blink of sun.

Small gifts, these errors of heaven. 
My day rises, fills, bread with leaven.

For Desperate Poets

I am minister to porcupines –
my sermons written in quills 
too barbed for poets –
you will need pliers
to extract my meaning.

I light cigars for whales
in their whisky bars,
pour two flukes of courage on the rocks,
stiffen their resolve – 
whale-roads long and cold around the Horn.

I lay a feast before the pack.
”Who’s a good boy?”
Maybe I am.
That which is owed
to jaw and carcass.

Who am I, Spiritus Mundi?
That vast intelligence of body and beast? 
No, I am who I said before:
Animeax, patron saint
of spit and howl.

I am but seagulls 
flying low
this side of the river.
Listen to them scree for 
bread and circus.

For Desperate Poets

We were dancing on buzzsaws – 
our bare feet on blacktop – 
heat so bad, the tar fierce 

Chasing us across the parking lot 
from our bikes to the 7-Eleven, long before 
"no shirt, no shoes, no service" 

Naked backs, skin the hides of sun fawn – 
tanned and stretched 
from chlorine swimming pools 
 
Into the blue, 
Into the blue of it, the blue freeze 
of the store's air conditioning 

Then swirling in a red, white, and 
blue cup, the sweet blue, blue 
brain freeze 

Like ice crystals 
of jet contrails in our mouths, 
frozen altitudes of the jet stream 

Then riding on 
to watch the planes land 
at Buckley field 

Where the US army 
kept all the country’s nerve gas 
in red, white, and blue tanks 

Deep below the tumbleweeds 
and gophers, 
and we would 

Twist and shout in pretend agony – 
show the younger kids 
how to die

For Desperate Poets