astrologizing the pathway

Antarres,
red friend
in the looming clouds of dank night
swept through with frost and odd twigs
grasping soil.

I once knew of a screaming
in the suburbs
born of brick and wet concrete
that couldn't have been ill
but for the dusted polluted trees
dragging the embers of leaves
around the poison of low murky sky.

Targets pinpointed like that scarlet dog star,
names shuffled through mortuary disbelief
and bodies caged and ransacked
with group showers
given by master
instead of group hugs
felt light on limbs
in party central of birth
when he noticed her costume jewelry
beneath the iridescence of city's angular contortions
made tragic by night sky.

I knew too
how ugly they were
as they cavorted on transit buses
and darted under bridges
never to be heard from again

until rowed out of fresh crematoria
in ash masterpiece
of full death.

but place
your hand
on mine
and we can ignore trigger fingers
and old skeletal traceries
born from aged tendons
that were born to grasp broadswords
instead of steering wheels
and ringed fingers arced gently
in beach fairs filled with the drug scene's
rampant patchwork
and bad haircut
like an abhorant scarred face
chewing on sickening cotton candy
as the brain is as high as a canary
shellacked in varnish fumes of garbage
the trash men sent out with post script.

hell
is a gentle misery

overlaid in single story houses
painted off white and beige
near nurseries
with iron bars over doorways
and shelter with gummed water fountain
worthless with lack of inherent pressure
until penny faced children
put their mouths on the filthy faucets
to drink their polluted city water
fresh from a button
their absent fathers forgot to explain,
where we once had window panes
and an orange grove
lain deep in dark rich brown
as barn swallows fluttered up through limbs
and twists of branches to catch a bowed perch
with limb and wing
above curiosity's cat.

gemini, thy fire rakes across an expanse
of a billion years
to settle in the twilight
of ruined lands

leo, cassiopia, taurus, virgo
thy fire of a billion years
did settle the grist of death
with its ethereal lantern
in the breasts of men and women
hammered and beaten
with molecules
from your neighboring unnamed star brethren.

watch
tired old train station
wasted in the settled Sun
could have told a story
of that auburn moon
that cut her bangs
into slices of a hair lobotomy
as cute as trench warfare
when you looked through the dead half
of her eye
and into the dark globe