A being of the eighth order
          of the nine-fold celestial
                    hierarchy appeared to me,

                    an archangel of a pale man
                              speaking so freely, and off-book,
                                        of a salvation no god’s hand

was willing to give, and for free,
          something prescriptural-sweet that
                    only he could compound, this dream’s

                    holy apothecary whose
                              off-brand balm could salve what guilt touch
                                        confounds, and unflinching in his

unfleshing of love’s martyrs, thick
          desire poured, sauntered through his palms’
                    static, this master of that art

                    whose plastic analogy fails
                              to impart the crude unkindness
                                        of a creator’s immortal

body, an œuvre of enmity
          no one but a mortal and his
                    immor(t)al mentor can manage

                                                            *

                    to manoeuver into something
                              malleable, metal meeting
                                        me(n)tal as his flash hands traveled

lightning paths through crashes of dropped
          pants, coveting damp crevices
                    only unwed mothers and few

                    makers of lewd medicine can
                              manage, the sight of which, we are
                                        told, damages youth’s unformed minds,

unsexing the Venusian
          ventures of rueful misreadings
                    of the sky, painting over (t)his

                    body of mine a pall of blue
                              shadow so Uranian that
                                        only my eyes came to life when

his kiss tongued to submission my
          mouth that ran without conviction,
                    until his own sublingual load

                    memorialized its winter
                              storm’s drizzling fistful’s lone, untold
                                        infinitesimal moment

                                                            *

inside, a moment which for me
          came like a cure for blindness, tides
                    riding nights toward a sunrise

                    outshining fantasy’s revealed
                              light with zeal, what forthrightness will
                                        tincture the remainder of my

lifetime, bulldozing onto it
          a redeveloped meaning we
                    let envelope us, as if we

                    needed some insecurity’s
                              blanket to find a solution
                                        to lust’s poverty in this slum’s

ultra-conservative climate,
          my saviour this bough of broken
                    leaf weighting my grief with flame too

                    troublesome to contain, and in
                              his sight my pain somehow melted,
                                        and as I pen this ex voto

championing his invective,
          I realize now I never
                    knew his name, only his secret.