there are the aquariums of love
in which the world’s many unrecognized great minds,
after removing shoes and sense
soak to unwind again, braving
after the absence of love letters
they checked by running their feet
along the newspaper floor of the cage pantry
in the dark and there were no sharp corners of new envelopes
pricking or cutting their feet, and no words that lodged themselves
like a thorn that hits blood, which is almost as good as hitting oil
there are text-screen urinals of self-promotion
who in their song turn waterfalls
that attract the green Caribbean birds of fortune,
when the promoter-motor sleeps;
in the day the marks and pecks and three-toed feet are left to prove it
like animal’s poems written in flat rocks from the pleistocene of playful
the Evangelical internet ministries of the future
have their smocked augurs throw shells on the table,
blowing their mystic cigars of new and ancient
uncircumcised foresight:
in these waterfalls of promotion
will be conceived,
seemingly immaculate, the militant management
of the next generation
(the terms of use cannot deceive)
*
say into Mainframe like into a shell, an animal skull for prayers,
O great magnet fame, come fill and crush with a final wine of love my skull-bowl
that sings of loneliness, and an oppressive sobriety which led to this uploading silliness
let me feel another’s set of fingers pressing on my skin
rewarding my use
words can sometimes fail but cannot fall
*
years I wandered through vast plains of self-promotion
in these provinces I learned
from sitting down on my soul between my pants and the stony ground
to sleep alone, at night with a metal eye in my mouth for security,
I learned listening apart the music-voice chime
of the ice-spheres that made their nests
over lost villages, former deserts, flower fields that turned
cold and formal after the unrequited fall, after the disappearance
of undreaming,
undreamed bare legs and milk-breasts
upon the long rain-swept leaves
that were kept by another city,
by the gardeners of Fame when a world of the sacred still existed.
