Ronnie Burk

 

eagle beneath the sea

to Laurence Weisberg

Lynx-faced man trapped in the crosswalk of
Fire torn billboards
I see faces in the ruptured asphalt
Deer dancers on the tarmac
Dinosaurs unravel intestinal tracks of
Mojave sand pits
Mystic 8 on the freeway
Homer above the ruins
Grandeur of nothing, extravagance of emptiness
Over the lattice of fibers covering your
Sex, lungs & heart
I write messages of filigree & brass
Like elk horns covered with dandelions
Picked clean as the vertebrae of
desert rocks crawling with ants
We are skeletons born of nothing
Our destiny is to follow
The eagle beneath the sea

Los Angeles
April Fools 2000

 

Automatic comic strip

Pandena tears down incinerators of burning cows magma of screaming petunias
Poison Ivy in corskscrews flailing about the arms of the Gestapo
V is for Victory swimming the blood of Mars

Sunflower Girl follows the rattlesnake up the hill she's picketing
for The Rights of the Criminally Insane
Courtney Love & The Sex Pistols at the public forum tossing hard rock pills
Come meet our friends
Wonder Woman, Iron Man, the Incredible Hulk

On the streets of Gotham City heading for the Pandemonium Club
Mall people walk out from collapsing scaffolds mutating tomatoes the size of Nebraska
King Kong on the hypodermic skyscraper twisting tornadoes of tortured rats
Lightning bolts strike Dr. Moto's laboratory

Phantom Armies of Empire flying into the cloudy blue vapors of Izalco above the stars
Spaceships are landing on the flat earth theory

San Francisco- NYC April 2000

 

cracked mirror

exaggerated facial remarks of an actor in a Chinese opera
cascading gowns of orange silk
sheen of glass in a dragon's paw
you look for me dancing nude I a painting by Hieronymus Bosch
wearing a crown of crab apples
scratching hex marks in the air

enigma of silver globules eating at the chateau windows
the man in the suit having disappeared
into an oxygen tank
took the aeroplane home
to mama

tree in a gaping mouth
hands on a mountain
I survey the landscape of your arms & belly
circumference of flesh
your hair still wet from exhaustion
your feet stitched tight
to the lips of whomever you just
loved

green pigeons in the sequined night flowers
you look for me
five eyes inside a cracked mirror

San Francisco
May 2000

 

OPTIC NERVE

Four-armed wrestler going at it on the mat
We are about as compatible as a pair of magnets
On the south pole

Sesostris on the high wire
Cerberus in his gallery
The Bearded Lady beats the christ child with a rubber hose
Lady Scorpion In her nightmare
Mandrake is a yogi wrapping bandages around a Mayan tomb

Aquarium
Aquarius

Medusa gurgles in a squid tank
sweeping Zeus's head into a jewelry box
horses ride out from beneath her skirts

Torn from the pulsating nerve of a rotting sun
sea serpents coil about the heart of Perseus
creaking galleons at war in the dried-up canals of
Armageddon

San Francisco
January 2000

 

WORDS WRITTEN IN BLUE FLAME

Hours-the-strong-bull-loving-truth
etches the world in place
snake born kaballah in an abandoned
factory yard
ominous as an upside down 3
little girls fly down the hotel hallway
glowing mirrors of the kidnapped infanta

                         steel blade
                         electra
                         lacerating
                         newsprint
                         people

domino theories confront the irrational factor
bloody crustacean between the crevices devouring
Man

stopwatch
pelvis
vibrating discs of
pure pleasure
sex burns taboos of the gods
a hint of Africa in the bluer waters
weaving
peyote eyes

emerald daggers
quetzal plumes
thunderbolt
dorjes
footbinding the skyscraper
in silk pajamas
even the Olmec mask can't hide
your lies

NYC
July 1999

 

SKY*BOAT
to Will Alexander

In the Horned kingdom Cernunnos traces the veins of Jerusalem
To a cracked cistern in a field of poppy flowers
My Cabalistic Egg hatching The Sephiroth of The Lost Planetary
System
Iron plumes of the ten thousand eyes of Ezekiel's Beast
swirling a cyclone of black coronas
His vajra of coffin nails and colored threads
tied with burnt cherub medallions

In the apparition zone having set fire to water
rabid dogs dance in a fusion of tungsten light
Inflorescence of Mandrake that little man in a test tube
separating the salt from the ash
the Tormented Mermaid searches for her children
abandoned in the sewers of the world
density of carbon auroras fishing for a pearl
in the tributaries of a majestic keyhole
manta-rays return to the lake of blood

My mother in her lunar costume beating Hydra's wing

*

Uroboros of my third eye curled up in a mollusk
Hekate's gallery sails over the storm
extracting rays from a nugget in a lead box
she knows nothing about the somnolent
footsteps of the Philosopher's Widow
at the doorway to the dungeons of chaos
Pericles on a razor blade incubating quicksilver
distilling filigree of disintegrating planet
extinguishing Mars

*

When the peacock in the blue bottle attacks its mate
the crippled farmer knows it is time to water his silver trees
Holding a lantern of fireflies
a washerwoman pierces the diamondback salamander
smoldering beneath the rocks
the royal couple poured into a gelatin cube
In the radium mines a necklace of thorns
strangles the cross-eyed gemini
always the sun & moon in one face

*

In a moment Toussaint L'Ouverture will enter the turquoise morning of
Nezahualcoyotl's calligraphy room and place a lei upon Queen Lili'uokalani
marking the ve've of the Ruby Queen on his left shoulder covered with epaulets
He will proclaim the sovereign rights for
The Constitution Of The Garden Of Earthly Delights
Heraldic star of Neptune's ray black jade insignia of the eagle-serpent
                                    on a column of nopal smoke
demon slayer of purified ore His child in the red suit is Chango
guiding Erzuilie's spangled boat into the face of Tlaloc
                                             in Aquarius
Ogun! Of the red squares chasing tigers in a black mirror
Always Taurus! Your mangled star in the chalkyard
boiling the leper's cloth nursing the Century back to sleep
tiny medusas in a locket shriek for help
to keep disease from overriding the emaciated dei of the dried up rice paddy
uranium swallows the rats scurrying about the graves of suicide kings

San Francisco
September 1998