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1

i
When I burn your eyes
the stammer of my ray gun
will stain a strawberry tear
to the beauty of your cheek,

and in future strange breath skies,

enamellers of gold crust tears
on empty darkened open eyes
will sermon on your brazen fame
till the agon of their school is bitter cold

to syllable star's divinations
by your stain.

ii
We proved on earth
there is no condition of peace.. Where
hydrogen links oxygen links nitrogen

terror is the only perfect science

On what crust of tear did
all other mistake our text?
If we stay. We pick the bones of men.
If we leave. We pick the bones of men.

Away from earth, then, I lose no part of my
condition. No longer hold me incantation;
flesh my seamless electron
antenna to all human screens

Light in my space ray, a steam on glass.

2

My riches are my country and it will
remember me in exile where I have lived
when I was every country’s mother tongue
and all tongues praised by my measure.

Not once in ten generations on earth
has the West’s consequence been removed
from its hypocrisy. We break out, willing
to burst. My saints, at first, are strange;

as Yahweh, Rome, France, were strange. Our plans
now snapping spawn, great round-belly ships.
Forget sin weighted with your knees begging.
Jehovah stunned the Hebrews in Phoenicia,

but they shrugged their shoulders, told stories

of the women they desired: idols, youth, gold, sheep
till there was captivity and exile; Like this,
my saints now track their own Canaanites,
Etruscans, Cathars, Indians, Aztec.

I lodge Western men at Jupiter’s moons.

This strange enters the unpaged vacuum.
We don’t seek truth, we seek canvas.
I run with floods, fires, gods, giants,
cutthroats raised from shadow

whose fist of spit
rides my white text.

3

i
Our particle beams made a channel of spears,
ten times in each degree we placed these rays
a ring of pulsing force culled Callisto stunned,
drew up a funnel weaved with mineral storm

from death below. As with a shatter of glass,

a grid of ice snaps, gathers inertia and force,
fractures down a treeless pitch, so at this ring
we draw from planets well ordered elements,
terrain for ribbon farm and circle cloud.

A circus ring as world, thin bands above

the giant’s sky; a land above, a land below; this
barbaric planet by scaffolds framed
a hundred mining satellites, like a black
mosquito sucks blood from an arm,

a needle set between two hungry eyes
to pierce the juice beneath the membrane crust

six particle accelerators, twelve beamed funnels,
till tronic rings crown the planet mined, and make
a greener earth from any hell, where heaving
monsters dream in sleeping states. We are still

that same generation leaving out of Egypt.

ii
There are no houses now where I used to live
wheat fields and women turned back each
into flat folds of rubric sided walls,
spacescape thin as paper, spun around a hair.

Dig my bone at Jericho. I know I am still a code
in your eye, made a measure in Your brain,
and my number will still come up one wish;

still, perfect, round, and just.

4

i
As the fire fell and consumed the surface

I count in chaos two moons in contact.
I have made the methane lake into a heap;
I have stored brazen wish in my warehouse;
I have twist and twined my scaffold’s rope.

I stain the crust of salt on every tear;
I strain the small brine in every sweet;
I stitch the press of rune in every brain;
I cup the sound of sea in every ear.

If we look back from the moons of Jupiter,
feel indecision or fear, let me remember
it was freedom that died on earth, not men.
I take everything; I must give everything

till hands and tears are empty husks;
the idiom of my wish must be strengthened.

ii

It is a point unlike the rest. Dull. With
independent motion. A sturdy ship, till now
maddened and strained, like a fish, caked with soil
at the fisher’s feet. Released, too small to keep,

darting back into the dark sea. Here Cygnus,

the heavenly swan. Here Perseus, too, that
returned with Medusa’s head. I see plainly
it is a moon. Potbellied, scorched with tears.
Callisto moon, then. Bony, unpurged, gritty

to the teeth. In seven years his ships built;
what did he conceive? What did the old man say?
He shrugged his shoulders and continued
the secret history of the star. “Io, Europa,

stunned in so long sleep, a man arrives,
harder, more obdurate, than your stone.
You Electra, now visible.
You Orion, giant hunter,

where is the way?”

5

i
We are wedded to untruth. Our genius.

We seek out untruth. Search untruth.
We cannot leave untruth alone in it is sorrow.
There never was a correct age of Christianity
until we are attacked by Mohammed,

Mohammed is the Christian hero;

we are always chasing idols and youth.
Without Mohammed there would be no Western
men, proving the thesis. We are idolaters,
Jews, Romans, Greeks, believing youth, magic, war.

This is all we know. Now escape earth or die.
The playgrounds of our youth our only loss.

ii

How narrow is our speech at crossroads!
I cry at the earth’s shallow depth and move
so thin between the rumor of my sounds
with precisions so stained with edge. Briefly,

in so many suns, how did you find me, in this sun?

How do I know, my right, my chance, my terms,
that in this time, this space, this light, your voice
touch me precise at one generation? Then
the proofs each man list, I list and monument;

since my lord, my loved, my nemesis, you also arrive

at my horizons, at my time! I never know
my next steps, then how did you know? By this
I clench and seize by cost my joy to this god
I am joined, courteous to my substantiation;

I list, perfected in all my fools and jests and masks,
with these proofs of god, Io, Europa, I greet you,
O god, no god yet kissed, not once named.
Then rest unpaged. O still-unpaged, I reach

you by other means. I open my sound.

6

i
All we know is youth. All I ever learned was youth.

Mohammed knows our large and toothy nerve
of sweet; he knows our gods smell of the forest,
cancels our fake prayers. Smells our idol.
He knows we don’t pray. We burst. Its our

bursting that moves god’s machine one click.

Christ was already Caesar’s sweetmeat
as Mohammed broke the Arab spine,
perfecting slavery. Our minds heightened
against the other: my canvas, my page, my book.

Every beggar, tailor, master, knows
if you accept youth, then you accept war;
if you accept this code, you must kill greatly;
Then put away your gods for a while.

I will tell the falconer’s prey
what the falcon and the falconer know.
There can be no Western man without
the other’s cry. Now terror draws my breath.

We shall need the light of the moon
in our brains, for this.
And leaves of beaten gold
in our heart.

ii
The day arrives we descend from filamented
scaffold rings, the surface below composed
at rest, well ordered minerals and a small steam
rising; till then we are that race that survived

in thin skins and bare skies,

already legend with our manners, books, poems
with news of strange and still-unpaged cunning

the idiom of men increased by my breath.

7

We all burst in contact. My atom, my heart.

Do not die unless you are a master.
If you still cannot face the parrot-masked
apparition. Restrain your alarm.

How can I ask for more dominion
when I already have all age in my mind
and my mind enclose another earth in kind?

How can I ask for more love
when it is the force of circle at my atom
and spill in my mouth to my teeth?

How can I ask for more life and time
since I am already rooted in life’s branches
and all time tailored from my filament rings?

How can I ask for more space and personality
when I already sow on other planets rain
and no man can undo my work?

How can I ask for more wealth
when everything I need waits,
circles me in space?

Why should I fear my misdeed
when I could not craft the stars’ vision
without I fall and rise?

No longer lessen me by youth.
No longer dismember me by Eros.
No longer my eternal wish obsolescence.

8

What do women want? They will not tell you
but they will ease the hollow of their feet,
stand in your dirt, toe by toe,
so long as you have a story.

What do children want?
they only want you to stay
and if you have a story
they will stay forever.

What does a man want?
He must fail if he is wise; then after,

every story in him tasted once. He has
so many summers and matters ending,
so long at wanting early what has no fancy
no goodly parts or sound and loved too much

on bodies, spheres; on other planets rain.

ii
Our ships extract ore fused to carbon fiber
framed to factories farmed from star’s heat;
turned to bond our ships with edged precisions
mineraled from broken tiered moons below

spliced by Talon’s giant spider robot arcs.

Above this mineral moon we make our Land,
and next, to Europa exploration teams now sail.
I scout positions aligned the sun’s elliptic
range. I stand these worlds reborn with beams.

A month I see re-paged the solar lip and tongue,
with their broken element planets replenish

the cost I make the sound of world.

9

Earth disgorge the human stain that
darker sky should feel the sting of men.
Leave the gods of earth behind;
they were giants, capricious, always away

at the other stars, and with planetfall
put away my saints a string of puppets.
The golden mouth priests the rim of my lips;
where tongue is trained, skies fall to my page.

Pray that our enemies are great and other.

Pray for Carthage. God is a streak on glass
forming as my wish reaches the steam of shouts.
The same crust meets in the same condition,
the same rain, the same mist. We are cleansed.

God has form when we release our heat.
If you have not already pulled your stakes
it is too late. You will not make it. So long
as we still find other, ourselves blessed

we immolate. So long as I sound I live,

I join eternal sound with my page.
These generations I learn will burst
their form on a troubled king’s wall
and he will be a poet made to prophesy,

to taste on other planets
rain.

10

Since god has a need, a cutthroat cries in its crib.
Since god has story, so my blood shakes in me.
I am manned that god has no hand or mouth,
no ink to text the guarded stations of his source.

So my passions are spent without science; and
some that run away are searched, raised up each
a smoke on lips as twins, seconds, small razor
paged choice. I learn there is no age before

hunger – and nothing is enough before
it can be worked – diamond clear gods enter
my ship, as quarks, walking past treasures
they neither see or sense. I seek contact

with the other I immolate.
We all shall burst in contact.

So I sin daily against science. Saint’s robes
softened into science smocks, still professing what
no one has seen, and only certain learned, confirm;
petty kingdoms less that all I can believe.

I keep for misbelief hierarchies of fabled death,
I can disprove every alarm, every dismemberment;
I mean to rule in both spaces. I pass straight
through the machine, beyond the factories of heat,

past the cutthroats fresh from their cribs.

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