Ebbtide Mannequins

I woke up inside some cave

With drunk flowers and a prayer

The sun and moon were sleeping

And I met my Master there

He came down from the naked clouds

With snakeskin eyes and a rainbow-snippet

For all I ever yearned to own

Was a goldfish and that windkissed puppet

"Look, master, look!

All the words you spoke

Comes true at this hour

In the weary eyes of smoke!"

"Look, master, look!

I see your temple door

I see your broken light

Like I've never seen before!"

"Look, master, look!

I've no more fear

I've no more dreams

And no more songs to hear!"

Master, with slow floating clouds,

Was a child of the last-night-glow

With electric fragments of the street

To kiss the Angels of ivory snow

Master, he drank up from the gutters

Those neoned drops of gold

With lightened bolts of the I-circled mind

As lamp-flamed dew-drums rolled

Before the walls come closer

And before the roofs drown

Master seeks his frozen flute

In the mist-lit circus town

Before the sidewalks burn

In the bull-eyed red

To dream of lost kingdoms

By the wasted riverbed

Let's play the dumb-charade

By the ruins of that haze

Where chasing shadows fade

In the fading shadow-chase

And stuck, between the words

There, in the photographed cold

Every picture, in every altar

Signs of hands you couldn't hold

Master hides his silver

In the dream-bound puke-green grass

As mind becomes the body

By the three-horned jet-swim glass

And in that other subtle storm

Of purple five-hand-draws

Like bones and wishing stones

Which break down all your laws

Too much foam and froth

From the skulls of the beast

As he steps down from the mirror

To your bookmarked wrist

By every throbbing shade

Sitting next to me

The bewitched treasure trove

Of hidden ecstasy

I stole the wildest halo

From some rattle ruffled slur

To scale the gunned-down edges

Of that methyl Vedic blur

I saw the currents bloom

With lotus-serpent-coil

And the boot-heels of the foothills

In the corpse-damp soil

Master, by the bridge

Though it's easy not to speak

With music crack-voiced arms

And a million wounds to lick. Lick

I wake up with my knife

And ice-flame hiccup rings

With cracks that run too deep

And all those life-rust things

You stand up on your head

You try to eat the skies

You paint your timeless clocks

And kiss the dead man's eyes

As first came the worship

In law abiding motions

With sexless rhapsodies

And senseless Delphic visions

You stand in the subways

And see those flying brooms

Of witches from the moon

And thus the desert blooms!

Those wait-thirsty roots

From the beach-Viking-roads

With flicker flag-pole glints

And those hitchhiking toads

And Master melts the candled feathers

From the wax-curtained veins

With pieces from our ancient tethers

And whatever that remains

And Master sees your face

Stone-fanned, Gothic, flame-tongue

And Master takes your heart,

Own hand, magic, name-stung

And Master soars so high

On battered bats' wings

His song is long and true

Silence, while he sings!

And Master owns the dark

And the hands of empty graves

When midnightmadness haunts

And colours rule the waves

My trembling temples tumble

As Master brings the light

From those nylon nymphs

In the deathsome star-scarred night