Picking up stigma like radios
                    trafficking in weak signals, even
a transistor couldn’t resist her,
this palpable desire firing us
          like blind neurons riding abandoned
          lines searching for each other, writing
canceled lines verse vomits forth until
sensation makes living’s curse worth it,
                    this force coursing through us rails against
                    reason what warnings we both should be

hearing, we nothings who, when nearing
oblivion, feel closer to our
          true being, somethings dressed up like real
          somebodies, finally farther from
                    fading fathers whose beatings bled from
                    us any need to conceal any
          longer our muscles, these hearts old souls
          eviscerated, ghosts evicted
of their own volition, from brittle
bones summoned, ripped by a twinned yearning’s

                    singular devotion while tuning
                    in, while listening, spiritual
pieces of shit breaking through æther’s
more fragile –ism, greasing its lens
          with an unexpurgated vision
          no telepath or psycho could patch
or pirate, this obscene love not oft’
seen, this steam’s heat too explicit for
                    general consumption, one man on
                    his knees before another how we

so-called “freaks” feed, two stone-cold “weirdos”
whose old souls go looking for new homes
          out in the mist of aborted back
          alleys, touring the barren bottoms
                    of gutters for each other, walking
                    streets like urban hermits who read in
          foul breath, unsavoury characters,
          and worse weather, signs and portents whores
and prophets together stitch into
meaning, insisting we follow her,

                    this desire of ours tattooing wounds
                    like maps onto the backs of our fists,
tongues of blood like ink drops leading us
to this ravine fools and dogs climb or
          jump off, this precipice part of mind
          where inhibition with bruised thighs proves
too formidable a divide, or
opens wide, inviting visitors
                    of the third kind, encounters neither
                    with saints nor sinners, but guys like us.