With this living thing alone does god converse,
at night through dreams and through omens by day[.]
—Corpus Hermeticum XII:191
i.
One of those hookers with a heart of gold
once told me to keep my money
to buy myself a better soul,
rewarding my penury with
an illusion of home, two flâneurs—more
Rimbaud than Rousseau, solitary walkers—
who lie together shouldering
the burden of being alone,
collar bones sheltering in their
shallow bowls soft kisses like mouths full of
incense collecting the ashes of his
self-immolating beauty, burned
forests of thick, raven-tressed nests
turning and unfolding fragrant
from under the columns of his fallen
ii.
arms, stirring from rest to pasture their scorched
portents in the wings of shadows
where his chest thrashes his neck, rushed
rivulets of sweat riding tides
of breaths rising and threading dusks of longed-
for tomorrows across his breast my songs
of fingers fly over, fresh tears
running toward his back to warn
its warmth of what comes next: morning
creeping his body’s crevices will rob
of it this twilit serenity, light
reminding him when I am gone,
that I have left nothing but my
memory, the heavy path of
my glances impervious to the theft
iii.
of his identity, I have known him
and do still, though my true name he
never will, for robbers bind strong
men not with cords, but choruses
of words that choke the soul when they wrap tight
around an honest tongue, though not all of
us covet the luxury of
integrity—to live by lamp-
light, to fall from watchtowers, to
die by gunfire, these are fates against which
we are powerless, against which we pressed
for a litany of seven
hours, offering our Selves on an
altar of flesh, a king-sized bed
drenched, appeasing desire as for one night
iv.
we defied our god, he who gives truth to
scholars, he whose cries we silenced
as we ate food sacrificed to
idols in anonymity’s
profane temple, all of this and yet his
spirit still moves, god repaying sin not
with pain, but hope colouring-in
dollar-signs of veins with dark ink
pulsing to their root, a man’s heart
I pollute whenever I rise before
him, refusing to abide his final
kiss before my aching commute—
whenever I leave them, I take
from my lovers nothing, save our
conversation, its sacred treasury
v.
of naked words rich with earth-tones and dirt
we dish as we ditch our clothes, filth
stitching closed every lip’s chaste
opening through which an ambush
of inhibition can go, dismissing
its constriction, knowing that in our worst
whispers are the prayers of saints, that
the place on his pillow from which
I lift my head will be one hole
mystery fills, as its pit of questions
grows the plant of our souls, wondering if
like a thief night thinks of him as
it runs from sunrise, through dreams and
through omens, out of cellar doors
and beyond the labyrinth of parking
vi.
lots, its darkness laughing as it pulls its
mirage of gauze from apartment
blocks, telling no one, except by
knowing grins, of how I found their
secret source and named each of the four great
rivers of paradise for him—the famed
shadow that I am, scrubbing from
the vulgar mouths of mortals all
possible oracles brazen
gossip falsely forges, as I open
up about love, telling my own story
as it is, pouring out this flood
of thoughts flowing ever since, from
the pen in my hand which never
held his, wondering if god ever fibs.
__________
1Corpus Hermeticum, “Discourse of Hermes Trismegistus: On the mind shared in common, to Tat,” Treatise XII, Verse 19, in Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a new English translation, with notes and introduction by Brian P. Copenhaver, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002; page 47.
Jono Borden 