a skylight is overhead, you could say
a snowflake is never just a snowflake
when you look this way it is a white line
shines a silent array of ghosts climbing through
windows if you look any other
a painting is never just paint on canvas
and trees have the functional equivalent
of livers and kidneys and arteries and veins
if you know where to look and how to behave
the moonlight breaks overhead, provides shade
to passing cars on the mess they've made of
this bleached californian land
parted the cornfields and led their people
across the continental divide, inside of mountains
emerging on fire in a field of joshua
and yucca, scarabs on the ground to watch
their eyes, like dead pharoahs have eyes,
and I could never see a page as just a page
you know everything in this world can change
in the blue part of each flame

a satellite moves, or it's just my imagination
I don't why they look me over, I really don't care
It's not as if I move too much, or ever
ran for cover, the other side just has too much
to hide on a day like today it's a rocky ride
I let you borrow my vest, now I'm left with nothing
I've never seen you in my life
a man with red hair, some hair and more hair
standing around, ten feet in the air
oh, if only you could listen to the wax
tubes play that mournful sounds of lost years
oh, if only you could mourn for sounds that
wax can turn into memories of people who are dead
and in the door going through to the room
with the green stripe all around the ceiling
they wanted my pulse and I gave them my soul
in an etched blue glass bowl
and all my other useless pieces

then I cried, "but I believe in God!"
and He hissed back bodiless that he He didn't believe in me.
I didn't know what to do or say, a year passed that day
my hair grew gray and my face looked like a baby's
and there was blood running down the trees outside
and all through me inside. I just cried until
I felt a hand take mine.
please tell me I'm in a morality play
that this act is almost finito
the poem almost over so I don't have to feel it
I don't know what to say anymore
I sleep for the night, hope to God by the morning
things will be alright
a year of nightmares passes along the way
day breaks
and I pass out from lack of electrolytes
all senses shut down for repair

now, surrounded. now, descended.
a jet went overhead but I was inside so
how could I have known that
I pull the drapes to get them from looking in
the music gets much louder. I am alone
in a room full of people
doctors dressed in black
and soldiers bleeding white from the
backs of their heads.
onward, christian soldiers
onward till your blood is trailed away
away to the horizon. you bleeding things
get away from me
or I swear
I was always clean
I was always clean
I will always be clean
get away from me you filthy whore of colors
I know you from your shadow and
the shadows of a dozen others
you reek of thorazine
you spread lies like dirt and I
will always be
black, white and clean.