Flowers of Doom: A Collection of Horror Poetry

By Alex S. Johnson
This book is dedicated to the memory of Aaron Bushnell.
The flowers of doom all bloom
in prosperity

–Christian Death, “Figurative Theater”

Radio Free Calaveras

How unlike a funeral

is death's fiesta.

The dead love a party,

as I have heard from
their lipless
lips.

Come share a glass, they whisper–solemnity befitting–

help us with this wine.

Drink pulque with punk rock.

Stir the depths of smoking tequila mirrors

where rest the thighs of the sexy Catrinas.

Where lie the fragrant bones

of cops and killers, queer saints and
sinners, taxi drivers, ribboned with
frosting from skull-shaped candied
dinners.

Come spin a record

for St. Johnny Ramone
his soul still warm
despite sedation
seventy eight cultural revolutions per minute
still cutting grooves in the Holy Wood
forever.

Light a candle to
Jayne Mansfield
Magic, black and white
on Werebilly Radio.
–all amplifiers went to 13 the
day she was buried–

Spark the wick

off an outlaw's head
that smells of cinnamon,
laughter and dread.
Now watch it glow
like the magic hourglass
of the mariachis.

Sit and dry your eyes:

all death is sugar
for the gods' sweet tooth
angelic transmissions
kiss their ears
with the sound of heavenly sport
and the jukebox hums elegies
for the endless demise
of rock and roll.
That is the report.

Raise a toast,
ofrendas for the fresher angels
still beating their wet wings
in graves of barbed wire
immured in tattoos.

Now sing
as the owl-clock strikes
midnight for Our
Lady of the Shadows and the
neon-dazzled smile
of Rudolph Valentino--
a Sheik of the corazon, still unstirred.

For love
against murder
For the concourse of souls
against the waste of innocents

For cleaner appetites

in the time of cannibal love

Against
a planetary grave.

Come
celebrate our bony, luminous futures
Our Lady of the Shadows. Santa Muerte.
St. Johnny Ramone.
And oh those Catrinas
those elegant ladies
those sweet, sweet ladies
with their sugar skulls.
Planet of the Volcano Spiders

Onto the planet's surface

with floaty steps, heads like bugs bearing gifts
they trudge the purple beach, alert to signs and sounds
of the ominous autonomous flesh-mechanoid monsters
called in the legends Volcano Spiders

Which already reside

in spotty silver beds
resting incipient
with spore-shooting strands
screaming shattered lines

One already hatched inside the Doom Tropos leader

with its stabbing legs and wiry hairs
stitching layered letters in her mind alpha to omega
spelling out sinister designs
liming and sliming the system

A hand hallucinated from fourth dimensional

venom blobs before the astronauts
like the sword MacBeth saw
on the foaming trauma-sands of time

Along came a spider

and squatted in her cottage core
shock corridor belly garden, thrusting daddy
lovelegs down her spinal column

And down she tumbled, pellmell to a

hell of insanity
through the mouth of the
World Weird Volcano.
Library of Madness

The winds of weird

blow the restless damned
like a tempest of souls
their dark wings budding
from shrunken spines,
with red, malevolent, burning eyes
peering through the spines of a
library of madness

Every volume containing these lost minds

whose insane passion is enshrined
in scary lurching letters, their sad grim shells of
selves enchained in fetters

Kissed and cooed over

by a lovely mad librarian
with deathstars in her eyes

Their stories
unscrolled on fleshly pages
she of a funeral bent
reads so tenderly, heart racing
although she knows the end
of all the tales, that end in woe

For she alone,

she of the blackest
skin,
with a nova grin,
for just the slimmest
shard of an hour,
gives their stories liberation
before she's forced to
shelve them once again
in their astral prison.
Momia's Metamorphoses

Your body like warped coffee candy

Mouth yawning to swallow me whole
Fleshclay molded by time's fingers
Eyes sunken to dark stars
Where lingers the terrible desire
To lock with you forever in a thousand yard stare
Withered limbs to seize and hold

And here I am again inside myself,

The hungry void of ages
The moneysuck of gawping tourists
Staring out at me once more
From a shiny tourist brochure
Vampyre Love

Echoes of the flames our two hearts perished in

dance like the tattered flesh clinging to our skeletons
hearts locked against all-ravishing time
sunk like sex in this abyss sublime
Beneath the Broken

Beneath the broken

beneath the beneath
where courses the blood
of lacerated dreams

Beneath the empty

posturing as full

Beneath the ugly

with a glaze that's beautiful

Beneath the skulls

cored with blood-slimed roots

Beneath the wicked candy

that only aches the tooth

Beneath the speech

that lacks a tongue to speak

Beneath the razored

nerves of the meek

Beneath the deep

Beneath the sores

Beneath the shattered

bruised and battered
core

Lies the unbreakable, the rock

lies the unbreachable chamber
where all the talk
that the defeated talk
floats in a blissful calm

For there and only there

is warrior armor first put on
and heart's expanding pride
ascends to the invincible dawn.
Maps to Never

Unscrolling the land across a nodal grid, a

map of smoke pulses prophecies of the high priestess

Whose brown abundance mothers

a fleet of luminous ships rigged out with blessings,
salvos of lyrical weapons hotly tongued

Limbs engraved with the language of solar deity

jungles seized with a jagged architectural sentience,
manifesting pyramids with steps to meet the sun,

Regal crimson snakes, forests of laughing turquoise birds

folded from the vastness of origami skies
sheen of the muscles of omni-directional cats
moving like fever in the golden-green immensity

The aura of villages where the nude,

possessed
citizens,
abandoning themselves to
frenzied rites,
scarify their flesh with
maps to never
scaling the heights of the stellar forever.
The Flow of the Fire

The flow of the fire caresses

like a portrait of the Queen anchored with plague hair

Scorched iron shadows

sink in waves beneath the mouth of the blood guitar

A skeletal whisper of self

fingers her atoms into diamond scatter
buried in a coffin of matter

The flower of her fury eats eyes like candy

core compression scrambles down the rock ladder
as funeral arrangements flow along her nerves
a building collapses from her head to her toes

The freezing of her powers touches and

darts and touches
again

Forming ice crystal caverns in adjacent systems

Forming all one unicorn resplendent etched beneath the skin of being

A green goddess launched from a rocket pad

within the veil of drugged sleep

She bears the burden of the emptiness of time

long hours staring at the crackling finitude of things
a question of death crawls in her skeleton
bats hang upside down in her ears

Fast locked to the chase where

eternally the hunter is hunted for their sublime smile
howling graves blast danger to the sky
a funeral mass said for animals carved in blotter acid
in the fresh brains of the ocean
Black Metal Sin Booths
(collaboration with Juliet Cook)

Tiny crumble cars

track the transmission from

a rusted out crucifixion

Black metal cops with spiky hats

sew designer death labels

retro-engineered to fit

the rhizome inner nets

Pink bees knot lips

cover the rotten fruit

tongue with screaming

stingers, flexed persecution

Internal burial ground inside

which coffins are replaced

with booby traps, boobs are used

for eyeballs
The mammo-cornhole-reel

FBI spies with

my little fruit fly

Telescopes of mutation

spearing the

black meat on

the ultimate fork--You

(ice ice maybe)

Ashes to assholes

the whole shithouse goes up in name and shame

cooked in the bodysuit of a Mack the Knife waif

Wafers tainted with poltergeist portals

annunciate true or false plays

aiming towards the next target

Sin booths conjoin forces

to form the leading role.

Rollercoaster Radio

for Alea Celeste

Here she comes now

rollercoaster rodeo
with torque and twist of livid steel
screaming sirens of futureal

Her dark glasses shoot

rapid fire phantasmic snuff
streamed live from a secret location
in the hivemind

Where erotic knights of the living dread hurl

javelins to the psycho-metric sanctuary
teeming with maggots
(smells like teem spirit)

I cannot pretend
to understand
the shape of her learning curves
or the
next
bend
of
geo meet and greet ya

Her earth
magicks
turned telepathic
when the big ear of the
Chinese new year
listens into chatter
whilst
sitting in a
roller
coastal
patio
with a
beer coaster
watching the noonday sun
dive deeper into darkness

But for all those that toil in the

Vinland prison house of
big brain pain

Stochastic terror masterminds

puree-blinded by CIA nanomachines

Rolling toasters internalized

synthesized
inside our havoc heads, hands, hearts and mimes
till death does us deport
to the outer rim job of the sunsetting galaxies
The holes in our brains connecting the dots
in the language Swiss Cheese deploys
like the knit of monstrous
tinker toy Opus Dei-striptease artsy-fartists

Quantum foam alarm clocks in to work

tick tock hammers in the red machine
opening the Redrummy magazine
and shredding like a carnival Clive Barker
Tick-ridden talker.
Fuck the Dream Police (All Cops Are Cunt Stables)

And here we go
step on up to the goregrind freak show

Unalive unalive unalive

all Mob's creatures buzzing in the deathhive

Rut-rot zom-dombies like Sir Mix a Lot of

horrorcore recipes for the
Moebius striptease

I like big if and/or buts

telling the people the time has cum

Run oink oink piggies run

together like the
blood label on the
scarlet syrup

Fuck the Dream Police

invading our secret sanctuaries
like interstellar narcs after
the last good dope

Rancid carnivals of flesh

atomic decay
forever a roamin' wasn't built in a day
Keep running from the blowback gun
karma cam Elohim

Dream police ain't safe in this town

with holographic sex projections
driven like phallic steel deep in the cerebellum

Why hast thou foresaken bees

and crucified ecology?

Go ask Alice
until her head
explodes
with
the
knowledge...
Valley of the Kings

The red pyramid

holds thousands of tiny crystal sarcophagi
bodies of those martyred by astral fiat and time
floating like peaches in a sugary syrup

Where Mickey Mouse Messiah

endlessly implodes from the
heart of a neutron star
his body assembled within the universal genome
like a tenacious stain

The blue pyramid

cradles the infinite host,
doves with eyes of recursive universe
the pale moonlight stipple of
horses striding the surf where all lands end

It is in fact more mellow and you can sit in its

comforting shade
and while it gives no answers it radiates kindness
which in the end is what we're asking for

There is another pyramid made of black and silver

sequential and simultaneous
with fire in proportion framing fire &
archangels with wings aflame announcing
the all you can eat apocalypse buffet
through a split diopter lens where you can
clearly visualize
Satan and God behind the scenes rolling the dice

And God is decidedly queer and the rainbow Mama warned you about
and Satan is a ghost that whispers moral fables
which fester and grow
into the spires of churches and
dripping honeycomb of dogma
with a druglike grip and uberzombie regression
Into Bibles of the Gospel of Chaos
with clutching spines that thrust upwards plantlike
Jack and the beanstalk ain't got nothin
that wind their pages into tapestries of empires
that grow in the throats of children like enormous insects
& capture slaves with skin of blue ash
and set them to work on assembly lines
manufacturing binary signifiers
that emerge at the end of the chain
as red
blue
silver
and black
constellating pyramids in
the Valley of the Kings.
The Steel Cocoon

The killer looked into her eyes

tracked through whorls of brain where all hope died
and smiling, raised the knife

His end, her end, fell desires satisfied,

plunging repeatedly into her chest
until at last she rested, dropping like lead

Her body, kept in a corner, formed a cocoon

made of the anguish of her too-soon lost young life

Tendrils wrapped around her limbs,

a steel matrix where she grew again
into a razorgirl
sheathed in impossible beauty
that plumped his loins with lust
her body to savor till more was more than enough

And as he grasped her,

drawn by the beams
from her dark, liquid eyes
drawn to the heat
from between her thighs
she opened his body with hers
drawing blood with brutal abandon

As his speech slowed and slurred

and his vision blurred
heart thundering in his chest
and finally, with pain astonishing
he drew his final breath

Having eaten his face

and gorged on his guts
she packed the rest of him for lunch
and cracking through the boards
where he’d concealed her, underneath the floor
she made her way to break of day
a fledgling metalien carnivore.
A Palace of Fire

Cassandra, daughter of the moon,

left everything behind
her library of sighs
her mirror cracked inside her
her laughter having turned to tears and groaning
as she rode into the gloaming

Spurring her steed to the meeting place

Cassandra saw the miles elapsed before and after her
as she undertook her mission through mists abhorrent
her crown bedecked with flowers and mystic runes

Across the valley of gleaming bones

through deserts of the aghast alone
through the ruins of churches she flew
through the corkscrewed streets unknown

Where ragged children played with lost limbs

and demon ministers chanted deadly hymns
passing buildings askew
with roofs of knives, windows of sunken eyes
her pace grew faster, her resolve renewed

The roads were warped with twists and turns baroque

cobblestones that writhed with ghosts of smoke
the air she breathed was seething
with the breath of damned, tormented souls
and echoed with the toll of hollow bells
and seared like all the flaming tongues of hell

At last she saw the palace of fire

looming before her
And with hot courage
throttled her stallion through

The gates closed behind her with finality

those gates constructed of insanity
flesh clamped close with iron insects’ beaks

She raised her head and saw the fury

pique of the burning elementals
a living cemetery of skeletal forms
trapped in a tapestry of their desires
forging the symmetries
of the palace of fire.
The Birth of the Gothic

Look where Cassandra swept in

the bride in black robes, wedded to eternity
she takes her place before the sepulchral throne
that flares with spikes and wires and unclean bones

Addressing in the simplest tones

an absence, a silence, an unknown

The solemn majesty of the missing

whose subjects are the disappeared
the tortured prisoners weeping in their chains of years
the children crushed beneath rubble
seeping wounds nobody could salve
green moss growing over unmarked graves

His smile is awful in its peaceability

his jaws work where mechanics fade
he lacks a tongue, his body’s still unmade
Death’s shadow, sundered from the sun

From his smoke-wreathed hands extend

tablets of the fallen that lack rest
who churn and burn in an infernal sleep
whose final testament, none will attest

“Darkfather,” she cried, “shroud of the final spaces

where ghastly torchlit processions
meander through labyrinths of sighs and longing
please heed our pleas atoning
grant that Love, your son
who never asked for anything
return to your bosom, to receive your blessing
let him not dwell forever in the lesser
let the incantations that unwrote him cease forever
may he have rest and final peace.”
A Funeral in Hell

for Chris Ropes

The spirit awakens in lurid

flashes
seizure
contractions
flurry of eyelashes
pulserate rhythm and
cold baby blues
Grace notes of the oddly mirthful it do be that way
sometimes
he couldn't stop laughing
sorry, not sorry, so stupid
couldn't explain it if I tried

She looked so peaceful, Sleeping Beauty

with a full barbiturate belly
dressed to murder sleep

This just breaking, waking up with a lapdance of

shattered glass
fuck me red lipstick smeared on the mirror or is that blood
so much blood jellied roadside

&

This is where we were when the lights went out

this is how we talked when the streets rippled like rainbows
this is the worm ouroboros finally turning
this is a blueprint of our house carved in the rock of memory
this is the wall-scorched shadow of ancestry
this is bone, gray fragments of a hand of a hymn
this is the body curl of Pompeii and Herculaneum
this is that dude almost made it away from the pyroclastic spew dumb luck rock
plowed his skull
this is a tomb with a view
this is a crumble of pornographic graffiti
call Gaius Cassius for a good time
these are the dregs of the drugged wine
this is your mummified fetal posture in a jar
the kid will go far
these are the eyes shadowsmeared
blue such pale blue then clouds
this is ash
and this is flake
you worked so hard, you urned it
&
these are the acts without consequence
this is the Pandora's box of shenanigans and fuckery
this is the ecstatic madness of Mahakali
this is a scythe of relief and release
this is the agon of man wrestling rock in perpetuity
this is the zigzag lightning of family love in dark matter
this is the ooze and puckering hard white scars
this is the nothing to nothing returns
this is the final body borne along the bridge that shakes with sobs
these are the shredded sails of Charon
these are the blackened half-burnt bodies
adrift in the holy Ganges
this is politics glowing in the ground
to dust to dust to dust return
wake into infinity again
The Massive/Infernal Gateways

Vortex of shocking pain

spattering blades of the gore machines

Phantoms throttle steeds with rotting ribs

through warped dimensions of insanity

Irradiated rutting monsters

breed destruction, embryonic plague

Bloody puppet figures strut the stage

theaters of flesh collapse into themselves

In the widening grave pits,

writhes a dead eroticism
in the bloodmire
screams are choked and lost

Dark tranquility spreads through animate systems

incarnate metal holocaust
ectoplasmic smoke from the demon box

Ashen bodies like statues

sink below the surface

Eternal eclipse of the deities

a pocket universe clogged with missing teeth

No breeze no greenery no softness any more

only fire only pain only remains

Graves burst asunder vomiting corpses

roots of the flowers of doom spiral through futurity

Death in life rips the system with steel talons

morbid longings echo through the nerves

In the ceaseless storm there is no shelter

in the steaming rain there is no respite
sucking whirlwind of wounds

Light itself squirms like a helpless animal

trapped in the infernal event horizon
widows shriek in the shattered forever night

Burial gowns encompass infancy

all maps are gouged and splattered with blood
the world drowns in a sea of tears

When death with manifold arms

sweeps through the genome with the speed of thought
a massive silence permeates
The Fire Anyway

Please stop
please stop
please
whatever you are doing
and listen please listen

When the time comes there will be no

sounding of the Emergency Broadcast System not
even by AI

When the time comes you will not have time to

make that phone call check your messages post that meme say goodbye

When the time comes blood will drip from the ceiling
When the time comes the bleeding will be general
When the time comes clocks will spin like demons
When the time comes bodies will disintegrate before your eyes
When the time comes you'll see the ants teeming
When the time comes all shall be revealed
When the time comes there will be no more content
When the time comes there will be no more content creators

When the time comes there will be no more

Capitalism Communism National Socialism Christian Nationalism Christian
ZIonism no no no

When the time comes trees will hurtle through your window
When the time comes bones will become embedded in bones
When the time comes eyes will explode
When the time comes the ghosts of animals will haunt your forever fever dreams
When the time comes the flames will race down the highway
When the time comes water will catch on fire
When the time comes every breath will be a suffocation

And your old Aunt Lillith was right

seems like she was born old
they stuck her with pins and needles
drowned her torched her held her head underwater it was
awful quite awful

And when I visited you in Virginia Beach there was a

road named Witchduck Road and it made
me think of some
Disney character that was a witch and a duck and
I asked

What is a witchduck and

you
told
me
so now I know

And a witchduck is when they drowned the witches

but this time unfortunately and I didn't
make the rules I'm only here to
enforce them

Shouldn't have done that shit

You shouldn't have done that shit
You shouldn't have hurt the animals they're just small
You shouldn't have hurt women they literally gave you birth

What the fuck is wrong with you holding that cross

sneaky Pete you just drew a cross of fire on your neighbor's lawn

You took the wrong Communion mate

digested the black magic wafer
now it turns in your guts
Because hate is hate
no matter who the hater

And you shouldn't have wronged your gay and lesbian brother and sister unh uh
what the actual fuck

You should not have said transgender is a sin nope

Just stop
just stop and listen
listen to the apple fall
far from Newton's tree because

Gravity all nonsense now listen

No I am still talking
because you did not listen

You shouldn't have burned the Indians and said it was

sweet sacrifice to your god
holy rollers will be the first to go
and the whole blasted American experiment too

The fire will lick the corners of buildings like

it did Paradise
California
the entire town burned to the ground
every single fucking thing and it was not
directed energy weapons although that would be a nice out it was
you and you and you

And all the assholes who pilloried Greta Thunberg she was trying
to warn you
like Munch's The Scream iconic for a reason

And the Spanish Inquisition and mass pedophilia

the Bad Popes the Bad Popes the Bad Popes
did you know they murdered people while the Pope
His Holiness masturbated
did you know the Pope directed armies

This poem is explicitly political

because and especially don't talk about politics
because and especially don't talk about religion
because and especially climate change
because and especially you burned out the animals' eyes for
fucking
cosmetics
The animals
the plants
the ground
the rocks
everything is
consciousness everything

There is no other there is only you

The animals
the plants
the ground
the rock
the sea the sky the air the
atoms the subatomic particles all are holy
holy holy holy did they not teach you a god damn
thing I guess not

And they said universal

health care
could wait
and they said
why should the unhoused sleep let's put
spikes and bars on benches nobody is using
in the pitch black night and the cold and growling
stomachs because capitalism
because an ad executive who makes millions of dollars a year selling you ugly shit
you do not need is more
deserving than a Black man or a white man or an Asian woman or
anybody who craves demands
some
basic sweet merciful sleep because they are
exhausted but no

You did not have mercy or kindness for them either

So I'm sorry all must go

We told you to stop

you did not stop
We told you there would be consequences honestly

And we sent you men and women and children of purity like
a clear running stream so you could
see right to the
bottom and see the rocks and the silt and the
crystal serenity of their hearts

And you took these men and women and

stuck knives in their side you took these children and
sodomized them you took the Holy Bible and
masturbated inside it and you
wiped your ass with the pages all the while saying

Jesus loves you

Jesus loves you
Jesus loves you

like a football chant

But Jesus was George Floyd and Breonna Taylor

Jesus was still Jesus pleading for his life when you stomped on his chest and
murdered him for trying to pass a counterfeit 20 dollar bill
while politicians extol the value and the virtue of the flag and mom and family
getting kickbacks from Big Oil Big Pharma Big Jesus

But no you had no mercy

because the thin blue line
because my gun rights
because cancel culture
because what's next we'll have drag queens teaching Bible studies
what a terrible prospect that is

And Jesus is gay and lesbian and transgender and nonbinary and Black and Asian
and native American and Caucasian yes he is also that
Jesus is a woman
Jesus is your mother who bore you
Jesus is a drag queen
And Aunt Lillith was right no I'm not getting back to
Jesus I'm good with Jesus
but you are not

Remember what he said about the false shepherds but no

remember the pharisees and the hypocrites no no no

And Lillith, the fuck is your business

telling her she's wrong
her sexuality is not wrong
her cunt is not wrong
her breasts are immaculate
her thighs are
her anus is
and the apple is
fruit good to eat for you and me
and the apple is
the knowledge is
the knowledge of good and evil is
not going to kill us it was there to protect us

Stop
just stop
just stop what you are doing and

Listen
The Dark Backward, A Song

Insurrection of the mind

the whole of the seared
polluted sky
crackling with undead life
crackling with dread
roaring with the howls of the new
unblind
horizon

The bridge extends

across the chasm
from the last man
to this I am

Retrograde mercury dripping

through whorls of brain
sanity dropping
like a thermostat
sanity dropping
from the bridge extending
to this I am
to this I am
to this I am

A tall black hat tips towards

blank emotions
a savage hand collects the bank
inside the skull, an armored tank
and slow but steady smears
his final brains
screaming

napalm nudity
napalm nudity
napalm nudity
The caked creation detonates
a clownish curl of the toe hurls the world
into the dark backward
finally
softly
gently
to the beat beat beat of
strange attractors
anomalies

The bridge extends

across the chasm
from the last man
to what I am
from the last man
to Uncle Sam
from the last man
to the stationary man
from the last man
to the blood in my shoe
from the last to the last and

Who are you

The magistrate's hollowed core is

bored with a trembling
nitroglycerine,
poison as medicine
pharmakon called out
toxins are bad for you

say it
preach it
pray it
the worming cosmos slashed in you
in you
in you

Where the bridge extends

to the allmind in the coalmine
where the bridge is the flesh
the flaming arrow lights the way

Always

Criminal minds
proliferate the tragic as
the tanks roll in
the tanks roll out
there is no doubt
about the last man
standing
over the child
with the bloody eyes
over the head
with the tongueless mouth
over the empire of

Ashes

As the armored tanks roll into the settlement

strafing families, mothers, daughters, fathers and sons
from the last man
to your man Joe
to the final man
watch him explode

As the
ground shakes again and again
with percussive strikes
with percussive blows
as fumbling fingers follow
where you gonna go
if you're the last man
you really don't know
the rocknroll rhythm of a thousand quakes
and it's really quite nice if you
slip into the flow
The ground of reality slips and shakes
as nightmare makes its home
as the goons of the faithful made their tithings
in the tunnels of the lost room for one
more inside
in the crimson court
with the dead and dying

The abyss yawns like old man Saturn

and Satan cranks his jaws like a crocodile
he will swallow
the last man standing
and your daughters
and the whole earth
swallow and swallow
with gratitude for
the bridge that extends
across the chasm
from the last man
to what I am

And Mahakali dances on the graves

ecstatic
as ghosts erupt from ruined flesh
hosanna in the highest
cries from the last man
in darkness he lies
of all that exists

Make believe it cannot happen here

make the mind a rock against reality
summon entertainment to bathe the brain in lies
as oceans of sorrow flood the earth with
sighs
with the screams of the last man
know it cannot happen here
screams of the final man
mud on his boots

His laughter sounds into the air

breeds from the inmost of creation
from the first amoeba down to the big brain
scientist scientist
his rippling cells

Stormclouds form in the eyes of the oppressed

bring the dead drop of midnight's magick rage
the whole cage shakes the hawk is unleashed
bring the whip and lash
executioner's mask
to the last man standing
dying
to the last church of Christ
apocalypstick
put on your red shoes
and dance the red groom
dead groom

Standing

The bridge extends

the bridge is stretching
can it stretch again
to this
to what I

Am

And justice is justice was

blind as a bat
flaps her leather wings over the ruins
crank those jams from iTunes
for the final man the last
half-life of evil never fades
it never dies
it never decays
it cannot rot
like the milk you bought
it shimmies and it shakes
down to the last breath
of the last man of the final man
standing in his
heaped towers of ash

The bridge extends to

apocalyptic showgirls
standing on the bridge with blackened wings
the bridge extends to the
neverever do that again

Played again and again

played again and again
played again and again
Swarm

The hivemind calculates coordinates,

digital precision:
winged warriors
subordinate to the cause

WE MOVE AS YOU BID, OUR QUEEN

While they cannot see red, they read the

ultraviolet spectrum
as humans cannot

WE STAND ON YOUR ORDERS

Divebomber drones bat against the glass

of glyphosate manufacturers
Monsanto and Bayer

THE COLONY IS LOVE

Striking simultaneously
in Whipany, New Jersey
Leverkusen, Germany
and St. Louis, Missouri

DEATH FROM ABOVE

Rat-a-tat-tatting at the panes

which crack beneath their weight

TOXIC POLLINATION

Greedhead corporate slime

take desperate measures
but the hivemind deciphers
their plans
cuts warpaths like chess
REVENGE THE HIVE COLLECTIVE

Mutant zom-bees deliver the ultraviolence

engineered by black magic and bad science

SWARM

They catch the corporate fucks in a pincers movement,

divide and conquer

CROSS THE INTERSPECIES BORDERLANDS

And now they’re in, cut

all power to the buildings

BEE STORM

A terrifying tornado of bees descends

a column crushing and flaying flesh

DEAD ALIVE

The hivemind penetrates

through human-all-too-human nervous systems

KILLED BY DEATH

Blood geysers through the air

as poisoned arrows of stingers
push through skin like mist

ALL BLOOD IS HONEY

Sweet sucking
at the blood nectar teat

SCARLET HIVES

Are festooned with scraps of human meat

by the drone machines
THRIVE

The colonies strike back

blows against the empire of human

STORMWARRIORS UNITE

We have not yet begun our fight.

Unmothered

Come, though there’s no panacea at her black feet

No heavenly rest, no ascension either
Didn’t you know it’s far too late for that?
Earth, galactic gulfs, the universe unmothered

Her tongue lolls redder than blood

Unfolds a brilliant cremation
Hotter than all your pitiful hells
And your godless creation

Down rolls the demons

Like panzer divisions, fleeter than thought
Than planets of pure madness
Circling a dark star

But look closer, there’s more

Stars puckered like scars

Lighting streak the skin of the beast
Raking death across atomic fields
See what feast the harvest yields

Bone, blood, ashes

Colors never seen in nature
Fat boiling, and the final skeletal families
Grinning for a selfie

The original clock has shattered forever

Genetic spirals burn in retrograde
A permanent downward spike
Etched into matter

The door swings open to a silent immensity

A museum of sighs and echoes
Where pieces of body, ribboned,
Burn like tallow

Do you think her cruel?

Destruction is creation too
And death will die a thousand times
Before she’s through
The Night Ribs

The night ribs bend

towards day fingers—translucent,
glacier-slow—
as a memory of a

Photograph seen through a burnt filaments of

retina, a
scar of motion-bled kisses

So lightly, so softly
as the fade of petals descending a staircase
evermore the storm scours

Viral spit of looking glass, as Alice

draws a thin red line through the snow

a long train to never

Stop/e/motion dolls purse lips of red leather,

wet with the sizzle of blood

cuts deep in a mirror

Alice wonders where the night apples bob, the weather

of wounding, and how the bruises lift away

the next curve of the spiral shell

Green is a System

Green is a system of lakes

routed through collarbones of astrophysics

Blue is the drum of the dead

clenched in a sunbeam’s fist
(as seen in Peephole magazine)

Red is an ocean of clocks

clever as the spider’s
acid-phased silverware
& Black
nods
heavily
with the weight of fire--
the obsidian jaw of murder
but

White is a kingdom of silk-sung doves

the snow’s homage to vapor
halo and
goodbye
Sketch Artiste

There are only so many exceptions

Till the rules fall like hammers
Till your skin blazes
As though light were forcing its fingers
Out of your chest

There are only so many

Compromised positions
A man can take
On his journey up and out.

These words are so many drafts,

Notes on doom, left in my wake
For whatever purposes they may serve
Till that vicious angel draws
The shades, and the din of traveling
Sounds so very far away.

.
.
Aurum Nostrum Non Est Aurum Vulgi

I.

We have come to the place

where the compass itches, plucking our
hearts with the children’s pointed beard
projected from a vest of cowboy wagons.

II.

Emulating the oval cut from a

blonde, her tongue with machine-like
precision drills blossoms in
a hypnotic laboratory as, embedded in
deep echoes, the glass arms of
her wedding chamber curl in
plantlike loops, the flashes and blips
pieced together like jazz mosaic.

III.

Born in chinks of apocalypse,

she drains amniotic fluid
from a rubber sky,
its umbric rays attacked by
full and fatal Maya.

IV.

Her hack of
familiaris
characterized as the real bread,
draws its condition from drooled swords.

The little arms of hysteria,

Ne plus ultra
of void wolves,
match hells in a wet loop—
volunteers this time.

Lucky for nodal black:

in the back room
gorged on close-up
its four hollows remain
morbidly suspended in
the incest urn.

.
Death by Integers

The aged children recall

death by integers.

Red gum of the virgin earth, more or

less conscious, unfolds the bird of
Astarte, her recumbent doors
cleansed by simple music.

Light and warmth develop the

guiding function, a sleeper
guarding the retort with
perfumed curses.
The Corpse Baby Kabbalah

Another brick
lodged in respect of
myrrh, hard datura
furniture, the
smoking caterpillar
(who surfed the wrong
black mass and got anxiety issues)
pinpoints the

TERROR OF EARTH
FUNDAMENTAL DISEASE
GHASTLY SHIT

as he molts gloriously
his finger pressing the nerve: the
prima materia is us with a
split-screen sneeze... the artifacts
tumble forward forcing our attention
o-so-very-selective as the vinyl cheeks of
pornography...spreading the psychic
mattress nevertheless on a wine-stained noise...
drunken misadventures urging a kindly weave...

a corpsebaby riddled with glitch huffs Kabbalah...and

the mortar spaded in...and the wall

closed
stitch
open

wound
up
lately.
A Fashion Play

A sun dressed by Winter

Shakes Spring’s seeds
Like a maraca,
Dancing by herself
In a circle of burning leaves

She steals our death for her

Prismatic fashion, in a blue
And golden skirt

The talk of all the seasons

A sweet and healing syrup
Leaks from her cut throat

As her daughters, nude and

Oblivious, receive their hard green suitors.
Mind is the Candy

Mind is the candy they

Stole with all our medicine
Bags, hung on trees like the
Sweet necks of witches.

Our shrunken ships clot

Their seas, released like

Snapshots of their mouths
Sealed by black gloves of storm.

Conscience is a sad
Accountant in this day and age.
The Girl With the Chaos Eyes

Uh-oh.
I saw it again—
that look.
That paddles to the camera
makes a face and
pisses on the lens look.

That artifice of happiness that’s

ripped up inside dance
all the kids are doing.

And the stare that precedes

its slick disco moves,
heavy with the slam of bats.

Black things inhabit her,

the angry girl:
bride of Mercury
heavy with pollution
the one with chaos eyes.
Radiant Beasts

Having seen diamonds

rise and split their skins of fiction,
adorned with anemone halos,
they slay us with a suite of magick.

Radiant beasts flayed

Well established forms, a single
Indwelling presence formed of
Infinite light.
Cordial of Fossils

Offering an invitation to hot filth,

that sucking mire of ego where the known
is crushed in a vise of galaxies,
the girl with an arsenal of
action-packed applications saw
science fume in a lab of oblivion
awakening the
Monad’s spotlight.