i. Silence has a voice where two lone fingers meet.

Two fingers meet beneath cryptic superscript,
     Gemini pricks twinned across Xeroxed pages,
     riding fogged windshields continents divided,
     scattering consonants on precipices
     two strangers feel-up, gilding edges raw with
          lily-fragrant anticipation, flashes
               of damage taking from fate’s cursive lightning
                    its liberties, striking up a panic when,

                    like unmasked vandals making havoc worth it,
               two readers playing Truth or Consequences
          seek enlightenment in the same old passage
     neither time’s hand nor politics’ erases,
     unexpurgated excerpts of erotic
     verse no lovers should have to purchase; choices
     exist for the voiceless, even those driving
     through love’s humid forests their lives deny them.

                    ii. Oh, how low the lonely go to get so high.

Turning to footnotes the inexperienced
     fetishize, picking out of banned books red flesh,
     two vultures fight over each degenerate
     word, those silver shards one another uses
     to suture broken wings; ancient wounds opened
          as these buzzards pore over inked carcasses
               swallow sin’s forbidden symbols, imprinting
                    deep within them a sentiment no victim

                    can misrepresent as never having felt,
               that same indigestion making (w)horrendous
          solitude’s already unrelenting hell,
     that pain grave robbers and death’s high priestesses
     dread alike: a night alone, below sacred
     favour, labouring against a silence that’s
     unforgiving, endless in its towering
     efforts to spurn virgins their deflowering.