Under a moon as full as my bank account,
I am a ball of emotion, stolen lightning thrown,
molten bronze rolling from out
between the thighs of a blind prophetess
sighing like a priest erasing from Scripture
all of its myths—Beauty and Salvation—
as if until now, it was unknown they were lies.

Shaking my fist at the gods, I chastise my makers,
taking from my clay heart a shard, a crumbling splinter,
and I throw it like a spear, this biopsy of me
up into the floating ceiling, past leprous tiles
and I greet my demise, choosing between exile
and martyrdom the better prize.

                    *

Danger on a doorman’s breath,
inhaling his invitation as I passed him,
sauntering into this situation, sauna-steamy
pauses brought his glance deeply in.

He wanted to eat it and I wanted him—
eating their words, my critics, worth less
than their worthless opinions, said it best when
I read of them calling me, ‘insatiable’—
not my work, but my pursuit of perversion
splattering my poems with verses rubbed out
like rancid semen.

I have ransomed princes, paupers, construction
workers, civil servants, Ministers of Justice, and
longshoremen; unsweetened stevedores unaccounted
for in crooked books—and I have heretofore confessed nothing,
seeking to bind my Self to no one, and against all gods,
I still find asylum in my own works, corporeally and without mercy.

I was born at the height of the Cola Wars,
when and where crises of excess and energy converged,
wedding with apotropaic animism in a pagan
ceremony, a remedy of slush fund money and hushed apathy
thrown at the Third World without any pity.

Cash, with its pale fingers, took hard in its cold grip
every last sentiment before I ever could have been
imbued therewith.

I was born of opposition, made for it from a crushed
mosaic of musk earth trampled under belligerent goose steps;
thrown down from an indifferent noose into incredible circumstances.

Defying origin, I have outlived my patriarchs,
uplifted my scattered heart’s eleven thousand
pieces above dogma and patristics; I have touched
heaven thrice, knocked and withdrawn my hand, pulling my knuckles
back down, gut-punching a sleeping world up
into reality, ignoring the cost of all my vice, every syllable
a ‘fuck you’ to those who said I couldn’t.