Brainland

The crape myrtle’s trembling shadow
            blossoming across the white vinyl
siding of my neighbor’s house
                        gives me faith

in the existence of a dimension
            beyond this plane we have landed, in the idea
that there is something out there
                        always ready to reflect

this cycle of violence
            in another context, one that does not relish
our quietly receding self-worth
                        or grow

from the dirt of our contempt,
            the blood of our worst failures
which are really the same failure
                        repeated, the same sin—





I learned to breathe deep
the first time I stepped into a forest

on acid. It was autumn in Wisconsin
and lady bugs smothered my skin,

crawled through my hair & nestled
beneath my coat. Sunlight

                                    drizzled

    through glass

                        pines and I

                                    cried

    when I heard

                                    the agonizing

        roar

of dinosaurs

                                dying
                                    all

        a-
            round me.





I went into the woods to be devoured
        by silence and now I can’t stop
                                choking
                        on the sound.

It’s always summer down South
                        so I drive to the coast to stare
        at the grey water and witness the terrible
                lather of excretion

cresting ashore millennium
                        after millennium.
        Tendrils of light
                    crenelate the horizon.

Rain statics the sea and evil, or something
        like it, wakes and spreads
                        its dark wings through
                my Brainland—thunderheads

                        efface the moon and stars,
            empires corrode, the composition
                dissolves. Now

that lightning has liquified
                        my face, I can see clearly
        that the sky is just an X-ray
                of the earth’s skull.