The Trouble with Men and Monsters
 
Hard not to love the creepy, uncanny and scary,
the spin tingling and disturbing weirdness
that raises hair and unsettles the nerves,
 
darkness that drifts under the chamber
door, howling under a wounded moon,
half-human wails of nameless nightmares,
 
organ music of a hundred missing souls,
butler who locks the lost travelers inside
a room of old smoke and dusty tapestries.
 
In their cold and drafty laboratories, madmen
mix volatile chemicals in boiling beakers
of luminescent liquid. Lightning caught in coils
 
of tension arc through the dark ether of night.
The hunchback assistant cries out, Master,
you promised me a new arm! For the love of all
 
that is holy and good! A lobster’s claw droops
from his shoulder. His left eye opens in an empty
socket. The scientist keeps his girlfriend
 
in the dark, but she’s annoyed by his inattention,
harboring suspicions about his solitary pursuits.
So, she goes downstairs. Don’t open that door!
 
I try to warn her. But that’s the trouble with men
playing God, creating the monsters they become,
ignoring women who love them for cellars
 
of high stone walls, conducting symphonies
of flesh on full moon nights, conceiving damaged
humanity and a new kind of beauty. For this,
 
women suffer for love and the madness
of genius, even as it manifests itself in men
and monsters, and the faint cry of creation.
 
 
Or Die Trying
 
Always the weather. The seasons sliding off
     the table, leaving crumbs
for the dog. The whole of it passing away,
     receding like water,
then turning toward the land and the blue hat
     it wears in summer.
I consider my prospects. Always something
     to complain about, living
like an earthquake, dying like the unfurling
     hand of a newborn rose.
 
What more to come of it? The air is yellow.
     The grass is yellow.
My words are yellow, though the syntax I use
     is blue. My blood is thick
with envy, riding through elastic tubes tied
     off at the ends. I look out
my window, see it approach. It knows my name,
     knows I’m a coward.
My blood is thickly luxurious, will take
     a long time to drain.
 
 
Parousia
 
After the arrival of the lawless
breed, ancient unholy ones,
empty eyed and silent, seducing
the daughters of men, we forgave
the devil and forgot the details.
Emperors of dark places, gods
come down from ships of clouds
to deliver us from all goodness,
these giants among us, Nephilim,
fallen angels living among sinners,
dancing in flames. We wait weary
and awake, gazing beyond
the window pane, candle calling
back night. Return of one god
or many, it doesn’t matter.
We shall greet them with praise
and honor, our daughters throwing
flowers in their path, rolling their hips
and sighing as the sun sings.