The Shell in the Mirror

Weddings

the impossible, not the casual

the kind where the groom is covered with dung
and the bride is a white seagull

the way the buildings look

when they emerge fresh from the morning sea
drenched with night, clotted with pearls

marriage of reflections

gold light wedded to the perfect calligraphy
of shadows knowing no boundaries

white avalanche

thunder and dome rising from catastrophe
tropes of contrails' and star maps' merciless
divinity

thieving wilderness and the hut within

refuge from rain separated by glass
clouds trapped in bottles while we smoke

crude alchemy of corpses

slashed by time's chain of forgotten landscapes
hanging in the central gallery of the medulla
oblongata

sweet stench of fish rot

pure in the indifferent swirl
of childhood's vessel and wave

hello candles in the darkness

the ice palace melting from within
dissolved in saltwater

downstairs

the huge burlesque heart pounding drunken anvils
invincible drumbeat of a primal adrenaline rush

trees

carved into an agate ante meridian
the frame twisted into winter angels

sight

fabricating madness refusing to embrace mortality
holy dream disintegrating with each sigh

one eye

Cyclops breeding technology into pulsing red and
green signals
triggering the third eye's blinding schizophrenia

caresses

sketching the ineffable grasp invented to populate
tuned to something vaster deep beyond lies

a kiss

making us more than whole joined to death
like hip to flesh by the Carpenter's nail

the pull

between ecstasy and mutilation
sweeping rhythm of snow's virgin brooms

silence

the ache of deception created by criminal words
uttered for the sake of something greater than
ourselves