In The Garden Of God And Elvis
[an excerpt]
- July 2018
Haunting the snowcone uniform
I am kept warm
Inside the swarm of intellects' insects
A hive hyper cortex of content
Streaming animated honey
In a rush of wax and hexagons
I keep the money hidden
Aristaeus wasn’t kidding
With his sacrificial bidding
In the temple I constructed
there’s an orchestra conducted
by the mountain centaur Chiron
seven trumpets and a siren
You could ride him like a horse
but he had human legs in front
He had human legs
The son of Cronus stood before us
two batons waving the chorus
and before we pricked his rancor
we applauded for the encore
Immobility fuses the city borne to their apartments
fire alarms ring from fire alarm compartments
while the sentiment stands its ground coffee
cinnamon latte sandpaper
the grit removes a layer as we pray for water vapor
All the greenhouse glass is breaking
all the cleaner gas is making us
resistant to the fake thus
we mistake that we’re forsaking
Beneath Crayola(R) parachutes
and Pantone(R) hot air balloons
I retrieve three sequential cocoons
borne aloft way too soon
In the afternoon before the simulacra eclipses
three cocoons like an ellipsis
In omission of conditional surrender
(just like Jackson Browne) Chrissie Hynde is a pretender
In the garden of God and Elvis
we’re only naked to the ribcage
you have to get there four hours early
if you want to stand anywhere close to the main stage
On the stage that they constructed
all the seats are now obstructed
by a 70 foot banner
of Bill Bixby’s David Banner
Through the gamma radiation
they exceed all expectation
and the song they end their set with
is the one that we forget with
There’s an ex-marine biologist who lives next door
to my brothers’ barber
every Tuesday he tries to visit a friendly seal
lives up to Tenant’s Harbor
though the seal remains unnamed
the same does not pertain to brothers
mostly one name for a brother
but my brothers got another
both were chosen by my mother
who pretended not to notice
that the names were unpronounceable
so we all just called him Otis
When you’re back on the chain gang
the planets tilt on their axis another two or three degrees
every 20th of July
I think about the moon landing hoax from 1969
that they aired once on tv
our eyes are spherical and that is why we think
the Earth is round
and no you can’t sail off of the edge
because the ice walls keep us bound
careful circumnavigation will prove everything I’ve found
and yes I’ve even walked the tunnel
that connects The Hague
to Puget Sound
[an excerpt]
