draft (9/14/11?)

Had he been an architect,
Free to [emboss] the skyline
With Chippendale keyholes,
He wouldn’t have needed
To become the seventh seal
Or next apocalyptic angel.
The St. Vitus’ dance of his mind,
Among all the blue-prints,
Could have been satisfied
Just with marring the skyline
With towers and glass walls.

Or thrusting an expressway
Through a tenement
Or maybe circumscribing
Some crony’s golf course.
But that would be just courting power,
And that would be charming.
But myself am hell
Covertly inside himself he said
Gobbling more Seconals.
Then a chunk of silly-putty
Pressed against the funnies
He turned to cancer exorcised
Just to stun the farmers
And their corn-fed daughters.

The snakes that mythology
Had sought to tame returned.
He’d hacked the psychic jungle
Back to size, but his brain
Was snakes he couldn’t tame.
Hadn’t he redeemed this jungle,
[this bug-infested hinterland?]
But what sweetens the grape
Makes the venom more potent
And sharpens the thistle or spine.
As [Jim Jones] thought in the latrine.
Time to bring the shithouse down.