i. License to Depart

It’s a PEP (o)rally as I do(w)n my
phylactery, ready my Self daily to
enter him, buried as I am in
his memory, the inner sanctuary
of one magic man whose army is
an enemy that never sleeps, this tomb the
holiest and hairiest of holes,
an overflowing inn busy billeting
another host’s pestilent growth, (t)his
wilderness basilica into which spies
spilled like fading sunshine making of
its velvet corridors a home, a tongue of
dawn wielding a flaming sword, waking

my heart(h) from below, slipping in this dripping
voluptuary without a dome,
this temple to uncertainty, recklessness
bent over the knee of misery,
repentant as Sunday morning, the moan of
my Gregorian chant filling the
beast’s bowels as I howl & recount in detail
every moment of how this hell
happened to me, the crashing hard of Saturn
into Mercury, the bruising of
a thirsty fruit before his juice could improve
the vintage of his dynasty, this
fag whoring relentlessly for a way out.

               ii. Intinction

Somewhere underneath the sunrise, d(r)ipping
the host into the same blood, we
recognize the devil in each other,
silencing caution we blind our
minds with primitive lies as we primetime
our opinions of love, muting
for a second responsibility’s
heavy reality to take
in for a minute his dick’s oppressive
precedent, sin delaying for
another seven lifetimes any chance
at redemption, falling again
to the base of pyramid, all our
intentions spanning the gamut
of the emotional spectrum, slipping
from wickedness to compassion
and back again, drenching the skin of our
foreheads in the sweat of stigma
and heaven’s forthcoming condemnation,
no condom and it’s already
the load’s second coming, in a rainstorm

even the earthworms surface for
their suicides, self-harm’s reductive guides
riding slick pavement the way I
submit and let guys ride me, a warmth and
growth of girth warning me before
he explodes, that moment when what I know
blows up and pulls out, when wax makes
of wisdom and candles a snuff whose film
thick fingers stick to as busy
hands flip through scandal sheets for the nudes, fists
scrolling and refreshing the wounds,
nothing to prove but I’m a seven-inch
ballad in the middle of an
eyesore of a soul, a story no one
knows, whose ending goes every-
where before I do, though I wish I weren’t
a tell but a vision, one no
longer bored with living this sickness, that
I could whisper to all my bones
that we’ll nail it and make it through this shit
without breaking from consequence.

               iii. Triangle of Art

From full moon to full moon,
Saturn’s scythe moves, a lunar month
of damage, a water
clock dripping an obscenity
of salt into deep wounds,
dragging its pink claws through veins whose
poisoned channels my course
of treatment can’t change, only just
improve, twenty-eight days
until I’m past this, I tell my
Self, a lonely planet
harrowing a patchwork of bones
we clothe in threadbare veils
of intrigue, pain, and pity, flesh
flashing anew its need
for passion, throwing off all my
integrity for a
rare instance of passive sex, rough
enough to split wide a
Gemini, too much inside this
time, the first time in an
epoch I let a guy fuck me
and he fucked me over

big time, chased a satyr into
a crisis, fighting this
satyriasis and failing
I couldn’t resist him,
giving in without any threat
or provocation, not
knowing the baggage awaiting
me at the ninth station,
falling for the third time in as
many years, into a
missionary’s position, not
knowing how to get back
on my feet again or how to
get out of here, his cracked
bulb blowing the filament of
this situation to
an insidious sizzle, fire
and fear kissing hard fate’s
impossible grin, taking in
his terrible inches,
morally torn since then, filled with
darkness when morning came,
running from his reaping into

a cage where I couldn’t
stow for long the stain my inky
loneliness had sown, scars
forming under the fluorescence
of mourning craving the
unknowing innocence of a
youth my servitude to
the Muse enslaved after raiding
of my (sp)ark the glory
of its truth, powerless against
agony and rust, I’ve
coveted since finding out just
about every shred
and iota of existence
I’ll never have back or
again, living’s curse broken long
before I could choose to
go on or give in, what use is
the breastplate of the high
priest of the sacred temple of
Jerusalem if a
magician can’t even take on
his own demons without

first taking his medicine? Shall
I pace my assault of
letters and consult my trusty
philavery for a
better way of saying it, or
should I stop giving a
fuck and admit what I did in
plain language for once? I
took Satan to bed and its punch
unmade me, making of
my body an adversary,
no saving provision
for a pact I never signed, not
unless my tears and sighs
suffice for ink in some kingdom
where, on Satyrday, knights
cast aside their armour and ride
bottom bareback, harder
than rock and swords unsheathed, wanting
to be wanted, without
a thought I took a cock and got
haunted by a ghost I
can’t give up, scaring away love.