from "Species of Abandined Light" by Jake Berry

from

SPECIES OF ABANDONED LIGHT

by

Jake Berry




SPECIES Of ABANDONED LIGHT 2


  Caprine
Son of Morning
        or Venus Quetzalcoatl
       torn out of the

     sea forced
   to yield her mysteries




                     Through the walls of the vessel I could see 
                     hovering in blue twilight, two pale white 
                     bodies, in a funeral repose.  Male and Female.  
                     She moved first, turning upright in the 
                     antigravity, white wings unfolding behind her.



                                          birth pain
                                     in the dying eye



  						      Crimson halo
						      Ophis


    				       torched



		swarm
	ripped from vacuous rain
		of Sphinx

  			      offspring



			hustled through barbedwire
			   or rat eaten floor (fleshy visage Christ)





TEOCALLI 1


         Locust helix






					boxcar soulful
					         cross





 			   baptized
			gears & antlers
			  in protein struggling tides




paranoid
   cursor




                                           devout



                                     rambling
	  			          sage






TRAILER


All the monasteries in the thorny slits of my eyes 
are transformed nightly into gasoline and 
evaporate.  Feels like wind in a fruit jar.  Asphalt 
when thinking about a spastic colon.  Bermuda 
grass.  Long plains of shoulders, obsolete tanks on 
a search and destroy.  And the process rejuvenates 
itself with almost no observation.  Is this an excuse 
for malnourished xenophobes chained to their 
repressed apes?  No, it's the spatula trick of a crooner 
when drinks were a dime.  The cinema virus.







FEVER


While pockmarked forests seek a unified field theory, 
sainthood scrambles for the light, Camped along 
dilating corridors, half destroyed by snakebite and 
mollusk infestation, they summoned dynamos like an 
earwig or lampshade.  It was these creature comforts 
bellowing from great subterranean depths through 
tiny blooms of birth canal that brought me out of my 
fever.  Low down, beneath furnace dimension. & there 
it's found again in a steady stream.  Arabesque in 
a snowshoe.  Gathered like clouds of dirigibles in 
Hitler's most myopic wetdream.  Thunder and a roaring 
piss older than the archeozoic.




CHRONOSPHERE


                     time fragrance
           more wicked than shark & wolsbane obeah
              black fire
      slobbering greed of cantilever
      spelled right banana, couldn't whisper till found for 
   radon dander, tested with just the right twist of
            spectrocide, etymology, 
 hearsay, banker's idea of plastic security
    ran, who'll devise anything more spectacular 
              bitten by the deceiver, brought to the
   borderland bound, and gagged,
                 taught forgiveness,
       this never, this unapproachable          anslm holding
  fingers,          the hopeless and daring, 
     died to prevent conception, blacker than original fusion,
     grown dead under the killer's belly,
 fungus static material rot of form,
     reminded where the catalepsing genders obedience
  and the fates continue their riot,
        nobody the fuel, where imagination runs,
twisted tankers vomiting,
       can be caught in the slog, the reason, the logic
       of pliable men totality,
   stumbling on game leg, forward ... the individual, graven ultimate
        tear fathering my wish.
      this death ending
               repeatedly chronos waiting the rescue of 
       madness, betrayed by the wish where it wants blood, 
       salamander's easiness across the ice
          shame in the clap ground        
          of field, indigenous, alien, found in the willows
                 civil war rags, turning of copper
            passed among the women for supper
returned and phrased the final solo like bleating flaccid nipples
  sleeping beneath their scales,
              the roam of planes, see details of the chariot's
       art,                       the lace of feeling
        vagina's tangible fear, displaced, flooding over
  the walls into Sodom
                 again the undertaker civilizes inspiration
what gain the meathook in prayer
              abundantly recognizes his father in the reflection
                  straining against the incline
              play and refuse
                    entelecy...  whole crimson parade
      down among the sizzling flies and dwarfs, her demonism
blossoms slowly in origin






TEOCALLI 2


                          Thunderhead.


 
                          ant of oasis
                         without tongue


                                       Fast dementia
                                crave blown gland -




& Ptah
   who swallowed vulcan
   (Time contacts
   and bellows...  (bullroarer)





                              A testament of flailing
                              tentacles in silhouette



                      in guitar moan
                   and viscous hallucinated
                                  glare



                                              Reality's curve.






ESSAY: EMPIRE POETS



                       We were smuggled
                     across the border
                            into time

                           by subversive
                             angels
                           through cracks
                          in the empire

                            & my father 
                           wondered why 
                             as an infant 
                              I'd cry so long


                      What a Pitiful destiny
                          singing
                        with Your tongue cut out

                         though we articulate

                              a million

                               silent

                               voices

                               Loudly!

                             some human
                             some not

                         we do, after all,

                        owe the angels their due

                         & the demons
                        no different
                       for services rendered

                         love, food, music
                         by the dark arts

                       all Of it scandalous
                         & Punishable

                           I climb
                          out of a pit 
                           of dreams 
                        and see the boat of Osiris 
                           fading fast 
                          over the horizon
                             into night

                          civilization
                             is dying

                            thank god

                       whoever it is
                            next time,

                        (a Chorus of
                         overwhelming voices
                         crying from
                         great Fields?)

                      I hope she is merciful 
                       & we can help nurture 
                             her into being


                        before we are smuggled
                         back into each Other



                for lack Foley and Michael McClure



AFTER OBSERVING AMERICAN BUREAUCRACY 10.91


They appear 39 times in the Forbidden City, in yellow 
robes, heads bowed, completely unaware of their 
surroundings.  As they move slowly across the vast 
courtyard the sun turns an eerie red; all the toilets in 
New York cough themselves full of a thick bloody stew; 
mother wipes her forehead and peels back the skin, 
revealing on her skull the image of a disemboweled 
eagle.  As they disappear for the last time the sun goes
black and the ancient dynasties are reborn in Egypt.
Ra-cum-seti.






ELECTION YEAR


Shouldn't we have seen it coming?  An age of golden totem 
followed by an age of vomit, lice, and plague?  Decay slobbers 
over her vertebrae, the desert trigger, a fat gangster earning 
his commitment to the toilet.  At the end of a long hallway 
crops fail in the raging laughter of a rusty sun, polyester 
orchids gag for Christ who strokes out bloated and diabetic 
on his patio in Beverly Hills.  It's the perfect America -- 
genocide descendants and gasoline swamp.  I'm casting my 
vote with a torch.






AMERICAN FRAME


You need a tongue!  You need a rang spangler?!  Terse scrolls 
tighten the diaphragm into a coiled grin.  All night long requiems 
of pistachio and mold.  The prevalence of semen in our current 
posture will leave us naked before the fridge when the alarm 
reckons its sad demise.  Somewhere hallelujah means grease 
and grease is piles of forgotten arteries.




IG 3




                  Hell.  Bark.
               Teethe in this Grain.
                Phlegm smoke in Jackal light.
            Crux dementia
                   paradox - Cacophoria!

                   An essential dissolution.

                Sweat.  Tearduct vinegar.
               Sewage wails a rising
                Parade of dancers.
                       Stench.
                       Faith.
              The executioner's windshield.

               Swallowing the muscles of 
                  projector. 
                  funeral digs.

               Apothoscope strewn
               between membranes,

                       Open.






IG 4



             Liturgy: Spokemouth


               Gradually the gelatin submits.
            Armed alive in fiasco roaching.
                   Calcium.


           Machination of gender
           randomly prisoned


           a fragmented serum


           adrift with radio fetus.


               Callous memory
               like proprietor.


             Mother of Merchants

       castrate the populace suspect!


                Annulus Nervosa

        murder this Siren of Glut!





I need a century without age.  An edible network of tissues where 
swimmers easily retrace their ancestry.  Something wildly 
clairaudient asleep in the window sill gathering evidence of still 
further calibrations of tumurous uterine growth.  Does this 
betray a hidden succulence, a rejection of form, his eyes turned 
backward oozing into the brick?  A sudden slowness, vine 
creepers, resurrected jungle city proudly polishing its quartz 
cockring - a gargantua etched with indecipherable glyphs.  The 
meaning of tiny fingerprints strewn along the interior of 
arteries.  This is why the room shudders with antlers growing from 
the corners and children instinctively claw its carpet for rain.  
Founded on the suffering of ancient altars submerged in echoes 
of coelacanth unbelieving the necessity of ruin.





THE OUTRE EQUATION


I have heroes, without a doubt, that reunite me to the subterranean
overdream     he said he was hungry for the outer well, to be climbing 
in desperation up slick moss covered bricks in the dead night of 
holocaust, knowing that no one would be left alive to save him and 
he'd be unable to continue and die slowly with snakes around his ankles, 
crying blood and starving

yet this is Only one explanation of the possibility

slight Contortion of the triangle into a spiral by twisted gesticulations
more genuflect that equation
                             and the Planets fell away like glittering 
shackles into the space measured by equivocal fuchsia heartbeats 
remain insoluble

Abdul Alhazred's pentagrams scrawled into the aluminum floor of a 
dynamo like my manboy watching a retarded man grab a pig around the 
throat with a leather strap, pulling a steaming butcherknife out of 
the fire and with one quick slash slicing the balls off the hog 
& the gory cream red puss that shot out the wound like cumdrops from 
brimstone sewers, splashing on frosted grass and melting into the 
white

          & the piercing guttural scream that gushed from the animal
when it realized the intense pain was accompanied by an injury so 
severe it destroyed his identity with one fatal gesture between the 
legs

the underworld has no delectable promise of paradise, starry gloam
over fiery swamp
but the green mantle of the lunatic trickster waits at the bottom of a
dank tartarean well

how in my drunk rage  hurled a glass at the wall and it exploded
into glimmering fetal galaxies
                        left gaping holes where the inner wire mesh
tensed with pain

trying to rip pages from nil
           and bodied robe and bring them into perceptible formlessness
like a disembodied robe moving across the floor
                                  the OUTRE equation
         gambling your bones for an elusive fruit

logic and reason are necessary

but outside
  	   logic will fail you
	   and reason will make you a slave in a rich man's mansion
	   concocting zombie poison in the basement at night after
	   the king has gone to fucksleep
outside cannot be like anything imaginable, or experiential, but
somenothing that creates an inverted essence, positrons bouncing
out of the void

grow monsters out the side of your head 
and create the genius superhuman paragenic phallic infidel 
with the thunder of a thousand orgasms sweating all over her chest 
could this be a procession of possessed priests moving in perfect time 
to the limp of a steady broken rhythm

tetragrammaton hanging 600 worlds & 13=22 fountains of oil in his
beard
which he eats out of the slime of creation,
                                            triceratops
and the plutonium wound of hourglass silos - cattle fodder
                                               Baal death involution

                                    OUTRE                                                                                OUTRE
                                salt in water
                        thick hanging quicksilver



                        for Jack Foley and Malok







*****





SPECIES Of ABANDONED LIGHT 7



      gathering mandrake
wails in her


                   | | | | . -


                                  calliope neon storm (bodies)



              transfigured (his)
                   obsequies.
                                          leaf genome               
                                              release their color
                                       vermilion yellow
                                          in gorgeous violence
                                                      (sirens)



                        ...

                   A window hung
                 in the reverse mind

                         & from those preternatural depths

- solar fire
  in the blood -

					legion faces
					legion voice







IG 9


			Corpse of Yemaya
			7 goats in hive
			(corroding in polis)


tower eclipse & stinking 
   psyche's spiral malaria 
  refrain, unreadable liver


		whoredom demands a higher 
	     (playground rape in sealfire 
	      moved these bolts 
          unleashing a cold line of disease,
                                        horse & rider -



	      asleep - bus station halo
   		     resigned the skull, the cup



          wing, limestone, & Mars, a clanging trumpet 
                              of natural fuse 
                (twin homunculi rise and merge)
                                  grinding womb &
                                               fossil dirge



	      Feed the dragon    Feed the dragon
			mounted for escape


  	        a prayer: lips, teeth, and tongue





IG 10



			oblivion stripped down
		  along subterranean canals
		  		     fuse of human



       	      these are interim pots
          in plain paper sarcophagus
			Burning
			Vacuous cities mumbling
			Paradise
			the flesh eating stone



	         Hecate, sworn of pulse,
	         gargling mama's douche



		     the Archons conspire

	           doorknob genuflect-anger
		      	        spiraling time



 		     IG
		     IX
	       an inferent psyche
           garden of entropic mirrors


						quilt
						womb
						flute
						wet
					           and before


			there
			in the above,
		eventually,
		even,
		perpetually,



              the stillness of that even.
              nothing, collapsing. without total.


			to paraphrase: 
			wings beating against 
			the breathing of my eyes, 
			(not visual; absolute without 
					absoluteness)



      convoluted to orgasm slow saxophone body & hair
			                    unquantized time


    			    falling in all directions


		   imagine this space
		   without the projection



sleep							bliss
float							jazz
high wind						| | | |
							| | | |
lips

                                             yes






Copyright © 1995 by Jake Berry.

From Species of Abandoned Light, published by

Pantograph Press
P.O. Box 9643
Berkeley, CA 94709

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