i.

               ‘If only you were as liberal
as the things I say that you take
too literally—in the desert,
treasure is water, not gold—it’s
not just something in my heart or mind,
but in my hand, so drink, my wife,’

I told her before she bit into
a cherry and out of it flowed
piss-warm Coca-Cola aglow with
vending-machine luminescence,
sticking in her throat as it rolled down
it like asphalt molasses, black

liquor bathing bad apples fallen
angels drown in fat packages
their twitching wings wrap in latex laughs,
cracked lips pinching a pyramid’s
granite tip as they roll on a path
to Paradise paved with plastic.

                                   ii.

               Behind frosted lenses, her Stoic
mug fulfills its heroic pose
as she pretends to have a purpose,
drinking insolence as we pool
our loneliness and purchase words nursed
on tits no First-World kids would milk,

buying up vowels as if “free-speech”
were a champagne-room table-dance,
“virgins” whispering of dividends
and negligible ROIs,
of the futility of throwing
them into volcanoes just to

appease drought bleeding commodities
markets dry—hearing which, instead
of tipping, we all sigh agreement—
besides passing our time with strict
ascetic insight, sunblind and burnt
too deliriously to fight

them off, we take on those demon eyes
of our own urges, banqueting
with lies peering into us, daylight
turning blank faces to pages
on which flames write lurid passages
prophesying that tonight we,

too, will suck the same fruit, coming to
conclusions as we rub our Selves
raw—in the wrong way—our right wings clipped
like those fallen angels’ are, tongues
unwashed and impossible to stop
as we make the wilderness talk.

                                   iii.

               Following a river uphill, lips
split as what we spill germinates
into bitter herbs wind misinterprets
as poison, lifting on Rumour’s
desolate breath our night together,
blowing it out of proportion.

                                   iv.

               ‘If only you were as liberal
as the things I say that you take
too literally—in the desert,
treasure is water, not gold—’ it’s
what I said before she broke my flesh
and licked my soul, eating it whole.