Pipe-bursts of light crack spines as the books
of broad flesh vellum gingerly across the barren
          backs of the boys whose yardstick columns
                    rise and fall triumphant in the winter of morning.

Bored in school and boarding where coals cool
before toes can cadaver to Lazarean flight,
          those fugitive embers ignite whose
                    fistful of flesh I Merchant-of-Venice to pound well.

Swift-throated talent prodigies its
way through this Salon des Refusés, exhibiting
          without thrift what wealth of abuses
                    we say were applause, ovations our Selves demanded.

But to the business of getting
him off, and raising from death, by laying-on of good
          head, my monomyth, my brunet cure
                    for Narcissism whose handsomeness fascinates me more

than my own, I drink obstinately
from his bowl and turn him over, Ganymeteor
          showering me with gold, running to
                    cup his prize, blindsided, between lips I close and hold.

Shadows bending fold pages whose rips
are glowing muscle promised to kisses, riots of
          statuary made legible with
                    fingertips, the unfoliated pecks numerous.

Unwanted, wealth unminted finds its
shine in this hall, every bed a canvas of tossed
          covers, if not for connoisseurs, lost
                    to the sewer, or the gutter—each boy a poem.

Vinegared wounds of windows dilate,
collapsing into winks magic-lantern-shuttering
          frames of scholars who, across the quad,
                    have no clue who has just eaten his way through assholes.