AMERICAN SUBLIME
The charlatan has filled the museum.
You can't sue him enough.
He has stolen the Marlboro Man
and taught him to jump into a circle of rope.
He has made stars of bikers' girlfriends
showing off their leather and tits.
He loves nurses in white masks
on the covers of steamy romances.
He has always been sick.
He has painted the same joke over and over:
"I went to a psychiatrist.
He said, 'Tell me everything.'
I did.
And now he's doing my act."
He photographed himself as an East Village vampire
last seen between heroin and C.
He's Richard Prince.
He'd take a magic carpet ride any day
on the hood of a muscle car.
He has a knack for finding
basketball backboards in the unlikeliest places,
but can't stop the weeds from growing everywhere upstate.
AFTER LOVE FAILS (with Alison Koffler)
Never again
will you trust
a poem
with a cave,
a dwarf,
or a cook.
Naked
and unshaven
you crawl
through
the spider's
favorite haven.
As the crow
stalks the worm,
so the wolves
try to remember
which came first:
the inward eye
turning to stone,
or the darkest thoughts
glittering in the grass.
Try to store
as much coal
as you can
in your belly.
Medusa
will be sending
her valentine.
ICARUS'S L.A. WOMAN
She sports her hood of feathers and stylish shades
black enough to teach crows how to lust. Her sly smile
stretches the length of her evening blue beak
12-inches long. Icarus waxes his wings,
but she could give a fig for his need to escape.
Seated on the beach her wings serve as her throne.
A cavern grows in her belly. Her breasts hang heavy
with the milk of the night. A rock star called an hour ago.
Together they'll go eat Hollywood girls in their bungalows.
