i. Fast

Words are what we do and making
     do with them is the closest we
          can come to truth, suicide at
               dawn in a third-rate hotel room
                    borrowed light moves through, hired power
                         sweating cold vodka, orange ice
                              shining from sighing pores, the boors
                         and the bored trying to focus
                    on the ‘is,’ not the ‘if,’ sliding
               from behind the flagrant cloisters
          of Heaven’s Door, neon’s nubile
     strangers turn to face the wind and
piss through clouds of self-respect down

into the eager throat of the
     next morning, foaming at the first
          kiss of the mouth, fisting dollars,
               hesitant to part with them, men
                    renting a view of the event
                         before its undoing proves too
                              disappointing to film, grab them-
                         selves and grope for a way or wound
                    into him, a drooling crowd of
               fools, cowardly villains chanting
          ‘Sodomy‽ Fuck, that’s the devil
     inside of me, dropping his wad
without apology!’ having

                              ii. Forward

each himself been touched by the same
     fire, filled up & swallowed entirely
          by untamed desire, the same claws
               drawing me onto irony’s
                    smiling pyre, gridironing my
                         heart, coughing up disadvantage
                              with all the abandon of an
                         entire village drowned balls deep in
                    poverty, sacrificing its
               own children to buy cigarettes
          instead of groceries & clothing,
     now the reviled are hungry and
their men want inside of me, bears

and brutes ravenous as business
     devouring politics, blunt tools
          colluding in the nude—but not
               the (k)now—with their Russian brethren
                    to roulette my cavern with their
                         echoes of misfortune & broken
                              promises, rhetoric that splits
                         lips & dismantles the order of
                    my organs as they pretend at
               government, calling this assault
          progress, this perversion of the
     personal I refer to as
a suicide at dawn, myself.