I am this
dead scarf of land.

Nothing.

Nothing again nothing.

Hit me again.


THAT DISTANT TONGUE

the smoke
like a cigarette fulminating,
the mute wall
of your teeth and the snow—
dim
within a dry womb—
Shall I, Love,
rake down
the windows and purge
us of warmth,
Shall I interpret you
through lace
of grease and
exhaust?

you have wondered
why I forget.

Whatever faithful few of you still read here, I am curious as to your respective reactions toward the seeming ubiquity of sensual themes in my writing. Tell me.

Truly, I expect only one reply. The rest will be pleasant surprises.


OBDURATE

The frightened splay
of muscles—
a glitter of eye—
I thunder within
the armor of my blood.

but baby
I have murdered for less.
I have split
the carapace of the moon
for the taste.

I am rich
with this hoar-hot hush,
the silence of my knuckles—
the thrush
of my mute thighs.

Heretic:
the cloister of your spine,
vespers in the dark,
dulcet.

We don't want to see them anymore. We don't want their snow in our ears.

Ah, me.



BEACHHEAD
The gritty white
beach, unfilled:
a pasty skull.

The nostrilous
caverns, the salty
lips gnawing.

The raggy stones
flog with moldy
fingernails.

The way that I
have known you;
ungentle.

Bonnie, your reminder could not have been better timed; I have not needed it more than in the last few days. Thus, dear readers, something wicked this way comes: another poem to flare upon the ramparts of your senses and perish, impaled, without having penetrated to the keep.

INELUCTABLE

I roll down windows
in rain
while the heater presses;
I want
the hot and the cold
like blood.

I hate
the skirts in dusty
kitchens, loving
cakes instead of me.

Regretting the sting
of your heavy breast,
chthonic—I know
you were not
that thing I loved—
But—

The music and the air
vie—I have
sore fingertips,
I have lain with
the baker’s wife.

Someone insisted--indeed, threatened bodily harm if I did not comply.

To help you better understand the power of editing, compare the previous entry with this one. I believe that this third or fourth revision more accurately reflects the emotion I was attempting to capture.


HELOT

Oh but
the hot city
and memory.
you wouldn’t lie to me
but I
would lie.

age
is chalk
in the mouth of bravery.
the young hoplites crashed
by out the window,
‘cross the asphalt,
and my plume
withered;
and I
was filled
with heavy things:

our trees
by the church,
pink blossoms like
a fresh
bone of want—