Great is the hand that holds dominion over
                    Man by a scribbled name.
                                        —Thomas¹

                                                            *

                    Poor is the man
                    Whose pleasures depend
                    On the permission of another[.]
                                        —Madonna²

                                                            i.

To tell you all that I have heard from my father,
                    I am shit and you are Jupiter, a chromosomal
                    rage warring against pleasure more planetary
                    than celestial, a bent moment of transcendental
                    metal warped by mental exertions people tell
                    themselves is normal and worth all the trouble, a bawling
                    mirror more than a little raw from rubbing off
                    the silver trail of streaks marking where Mercury’s wintry
                    seed has traveled, a testing of patience breaking
                    pencils into pretzels, soiling an assault of sheets with
                    lead tears blank stares lay there, unaware that, after

                                                            ii.

filling page upon page with complaints, no lover returns
                    to a letter that has caused them to face their shame
                    with such abrupt aplomb, an adroit bomb bringing upon
                    them disgrace more burdensome than the numbed pain of
                    leaving a third time, turning them into someone wishing
                    to remain unnamed but remembered as greatest,
                    I am come down from the silent solace of my mountain,
                    thrice a beggar richer for having feasted hard
                    upon scraps of æthyrs I have pawned my conscience to taste,
                    to perceive doors where others have seen none, daring
                    against nascent divinity to throw off chastity’s

                                                            iii.

complacent chains, regaining sevenfold the free-
                    spirited and spoiled virtues of heaven’s poisoned heir, my
                    solar penetrating earth with its scorching stare,
                    a glimpse unaware of hindsight’s thick and immediate
                    implications, or the getting preceding the
                    giving preceding the precedent gifted, that even
                    prophecy is a virus, a meteoric
                    stone skipped across clay bowls of torrid waters, dropping deep
                    into whomever gods want to fall a failure
                    of love, a slopping of holes with sloshing thoughts slashing the
                    resistance of conflict without cause, filling to

                                                            iv.

the wrist curling fists of cracked rocks throwing off what stars would
                    give their final sparks to have, pregnancies of aborted
                    pauses going back in soft mouths to grow again
                    until what we want resurfaces, flooring us bastards
                    with Byzantine tessellations of tumult, hearts
                    breaking laws into mosaic parts, tribes of wounds who walk,
                    purpose-driven thunder, splinters of terror, we
                    wander bare-assed and camp, concentrating our attack on
                    culture with sass we cannot condense, those intense
                    lightning-witted wonders full of portent divining some-
                    thing other than mortality and better than

                                                            v.

athletic sex rather present in one another, that
                    something-something immutable we channel when
                    in our elements, roughening the polished refinement
                    of diamonds with that once-magical substance
                    colouring us amethyst with confidence, what we call
                    poor man’s manna, feeding our contradictions with
                    that crystalline indifference to criticism
                    inviting and enduring heresiacal
                    persecutions to unite the estranged, those closeted
                    cases of tall drinks transfixed by the relentless
                    glamour of our gays, water off my back carried away

                                                            vi.

by vagrant whispers of arid breath that tread my
                    flesh until, wed to your sweat, with more than just a little
                    hubris, a fire of a forest spread across my
                    pubis and, forgetting fear, I let you kiss me in full
                    view of the enemy, though normally very
                    fastidious and furious, with you around I am
                    not ashamed to be ostentatious and tasteless,
                    perverting the craft of verse to labour forth with courage
                    words for the voiceless, opening up about my
                    hurt to birth what I have never said before, that in some
                    ways we are the same, sharing this pain of living.

__________
¹Dylan Thomas, “The hand that signed the paper”, [Stanza 3, Lines 11–12]. in The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: Original Edition: Introduction by Paul Muldoon, published at New York by New Directions Books in 2010; page 67.
²Madonna, “Justify My Love”, from The Immaculate Collection, released at Burbank, California by Sire/Warner Bros. Records Inc. in 1990; track 16. Words and music by Leonard Kravitz, Ingrid Chavez, and Madonna Ciccone. Copyright © 1990 by Miss Bessie Music, WB Music Corp., Bleu Disque Music Co., Inc., and Webo Girl Publishing, Inc. All rights on behalf of Bleu Disque Music Co., Inc. and Webo Girl Publishing, Inc. administered by WB Music Corp. All rights reserved.