“the end is come” hasn’t you ?

or if it hasn’t then where are you ?

seeming to believe it ‘s all a “dream”

sink hole eternities in a collapsed

minute of dust ten inches thick

frame works to re wind the whole

the how many unbelievably “dead”

in un counted monuments of silence

and blank before it “blows”

wafts of indelible nostalgia in

blood and pink with horrendous

screens bipartite for social

secluded from reality the sleeper

on his arm curving into a bay

of illicit black waters unfold

s the “red” before it turns

flesh bits and some diving head first

rather than burn at a xerox

degrees fahrenheit sequestered

illusions of all that happened before

now becomes apex and apogee

in clouds of ash and whitened

liturgies in panasonic vistas

where lawns used to sway in an

america dead from the waist up and

still wandering in cigarette magma

toll of thousands beckons with left

aura a similitude of grain and

porphyry flicker astonishes in a

rather like the substance in a coma

which executes before it indicts

and so all fall down in rain of paper

hurdles and miles fixed in a

single cornea of blackening extreme

on the cathedral steps hush over

mouth in display of horror show

as sky becomes a crash within it self

deafening the azure into a steep

trance unlike the other time (s)

when with a switch of the throb

an ovation breaks like sweat

huddled in a concrete diapason

that is sent rocket like into

energetic space not meant for human

consumption but later the steps

carved out of mutilated air

and echoes in a tap of small water

forgets to whisper its intent

as quanta of minute flame leap

licking the intense and inane

margins of civilization’s discontent

according to the law of karma

all of this

(silence)

steak s out a pattern opposed

dis registers numb files

outer limits surpassed

by map’s impossible origins

as red encounters blank

in superficial fright wig

amassing symbols of despair

in a small rectangular “thing”

easy enough to swallow but

utterly indisposable

we each that is wander according

to the permutations of discord and

ire swings its heavy shift into

the gods are totally blind

as on no other day this petty

no more a conflagration than

an end to all conflagrations

enter by this small lower gate

into hell and discard opprobrium’

s lie white flecked and “evil”

attach to the scrotum the hundred pound

unit and fling the “corpse” into

its ashen ultimatum a figure

eight resolves its own horror

in a reminiscent of the circular

conditions of the psychiatric ward

and nail down the coffin’s wing

can no longer fly to the sun

no longer bail out water like

used to on the moon with a crimson

berlitz “book” and code name

something like “morpheus” ? -dice

cast into the glottal well

speech is only plausible

after death takes “over”

the remaining quadrants to be filled

in by a pus like substance

“ichor” ? left indra at the wheel

collapsed over surrogate orgasm

on automatic pilot and swerve

into hydromechanical sky

with immense a question

as to the shape it will resolve

rope burn and magma of human

detritus the epochs of history

numbered backwards from alph to

zed in the upper left dit dot

a burgeoning suicide note

the size of tartary in hazy

ink hemistich with double margins

to the right to allow for free fall

plunging with massive elephants

into the proverbial thimble of water

applause leftover from canned heat

and Mom wired to her tarot deck

attempts that hapax smile

everyone undresses so quickly

none there who nor others that

have any skin left to tell

“to wake without confusion

and with compassion

\for “all” living things\

iii

so it has wended and bereft of

times the rain couldn’t tell

nor in the isolation ward

with a hundred to go and still

“counting” whispers lash and weeping

long side the once running waters

of , hush of stygian “fix” ,

shot in curved arm of a delta

phones to tell on board and can’t

the reason “why” in a landing

near arcadian suburb whither

the backward gait of many a

false apostle at the lever

geared up for an infinity of black

the boxes begin to cry on their own

though the whenever is a distinct

they are now describing “retaliation”

in terms of JIHAD in offices

sometimes known as Prayer Wheel

turning through a maelstrom of ignited

air into chasms of former finance

the indelible print on the back

of the skin (a song) denies any

whatsoever knowledge has to do with “it”

and and and unwholesome reiterations

come back to the radio play about

fragments kept falling from who

never mind outer space what about the

mind set which is holy and reads

any other interpretation as some

kind of blasphemy a total dis orient

will it matter ? stumbling on

discredited evidence history shatter

s its own mirror in a paroxysm

of ineffable “terror” (made me

do it) junk mail correspondence

between Baal and Zeus using

only genitive and dative case forms

a morphosyntactic redux of the

unutterable as it takes its own

glass reshapes it and plunges

a flame through its eye and stutters

incorruptible vowel formations

far off into the eternity of night

each hour a passing bell dies

a second hand registers zero effect

while somewhere far off in Sri Lanka

the gold robe of its own accord

bursts into a sublime conflagration

buddha on the steps reduced to a mire

of dust and whorls of choking

an effigy probably of the dying

tumult of the stock market’s echo

usually translated in a japanese meter

for those who can no longer hear “well”

what it is the ancestors are trying

or like the time we were driving “home”

and an angel fell in front of the car

what were we supposed to think ? other

than to project an infernal “dream”

about the life around us ? // spasms

// links // it was already “dead”

when the rescue team arrived with

their anvils and blow torch singing

a chorus from Handel’s Julius Caesar

no, could not have known “that”

was the apocalypse with its tinny

shatters pieces of the original into

a trillion bits you can still sense

the awful part is where no one knows

why , names of streets burned to a

on their knees the skeletons still

looking for a denture or a wristlet

if this is like hell then // eyes

peer into the oblong shaft

to return from there nothing

“Wachet auf!”

ivan arguelles

sept 12-14, 2001