Breaking and Entering 
 
We felt a breach in the architecture of a sea cave skull, 
scarred with salt bites and soft holes,
filled with water (darkening steadily).
It followed shuddering tremours 
And came like Krakatoa – It was not invited in. 
Its great body fell
              in foaming fits
devastated and departed, consuming us.
 
It collapsed inwards
Opened up crescent pools in the rock with its mouth;
Inside them, pockets of cold now orbit suspended hypotheticals,
Spinning loose threads of pale light in maddening, ceaseless webs.
 
Parasitic creatures breed in their chill.
Like all ghosts, these must be harvested and cast out: 
A quiet exorcism in the glaring light of the new dawn.

Portal
 
after public reaction to the Looshaus, Vienna
     
Even dogs strolling
                 along Michaelerplatz
                                   lift their noses at a house
without eyebrows. Picture it
                 slowly shuffling off
                                   cornucopia in sidestreets,
splitting stone grapes
                  on pavement, emptying out
                                    horns of plenty.
You must be dreaming
                  even to imagine
                                   a house like this.
They’ll interpret it – and
                 the non-load bearing
                                   pillars of Cipollino
marble, the steel supports
                  and darkwood interiors
                                    of your id. Enter it.

The Dead Man’s Cuticles

            The first time I saw a dead body I was ten. The corpse was slumped against a wall under the bridge – his head bowed and limp like he was praying without any hope. A coyote loomed over him, lips smacking as it savored the taste of August-cooked flesh. I quietly stepped off my bike and kicked down its stand when the coyote flinched. It pulled its face out of the man’s chest and looked at me. Blood tinted its tawny snout a dark shade of carmine. It peeled up half its lip to bare a row of red-washed teeth. A growl boiled in the back of its throat as if to say, This one’s mine. Find your own.
            I dropped my backpack to one shoulder and dug out the sandwich bag of quarters Mama told me to take to the Coinstar in Kroger. There had to have been at least a hundred bucks worth of quarters in that bag and I shook every last one of them at the mutt. It cowered away, answering each step I took towards it with a step back until I shouted, “Get outta here!” The mongrel whimpered as it turned tail and ran along the riverbank into the woods. I looked back at the man.
            His chest was split open like an unzipped jacket. I saw everything – ribs gnawed to nubs, intestines all drug out. A heart hung in the corner of his chest, shriveled up as if it had died mid squelch. Death was in the air and the taste of it fermented on my tongue like a rotten fruit – disgusting but vaguely intriguing. I blinked and realized I was standing directly over the body. Something drew me towards it like a pied piper playing a song on the wings of hungry flies. What I remembered most about my first dead body wasn’t the smell or the buzz of flies or the way his ribcage sat exposed like a yawning maw full of chipped teeth. No. It was the hands.

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Portal

Portal to another world
He slips from dream to dream, curled round himself in oblivious slumber
Ornate arches stretch over him
Elaborately entwined in proud Renaissance patterns
As he sprawls at their feet, a lonely sleeping bag at the bottom of the gateway
Unflinching and unmoved by tourist chatter,
The occasional jangle of coins by his ear
Or by the snapshots that make sure he is just out the picture