I, in my intricate image, stride on two levels,
Forged in man’s minerals, the brassy orator
Laying my ghost in metal[.]
                    —Thomas¹

                                                  [T]omorrow is our permanent address

                                                  and there they’ll scarcely find us(if they do,
                                                  we’ll move away still further:into now[.]
                                                                      —cummings²

                                                                      i. Now

                                                  From every truth falls a crater,
                                             I speak of love I’ve experienced,
                                        not love that I’m seeking, no, braiding

                                   the rose of verse with thorns of my own,
                              I’ve always been so lonely keeping
                         hidden the soul’s unspoken pain of

                    growing, pedaling around the same
               old ground broken open by the lines
          of a poem, a compromise of

     life for lies by the unknowing crowd
taken & trampled as token, dullards
     razored by the edge of bons mots more

          blasé & played-out than cutthroat, a rough
               trade of shamelessness for barbs ripped from
                    this mouth by those sharks of men calling

                         me ‘babe’, a perpetually sour
                              sower whose harvest is that roughest
                                   patch of scorched earth, of crop-withering

                                        dust kicked-up by this outspokenness,
                                             as much a parent’s perennial
                                                  failure as the ash and sulphur of

                                                                      ii. Tomorrow

                                                  an alchemical flower scattered
                                             by gravity’s greediest pretence
                                        robbing the inverted tower of

                                   its pennies of interpretation,
                              wisdom thrown below the notice of
                         wayward exterminating angels

                    menacing rainbows with their brassy
               wealth of oppression, taking out of
          hand beneath the eyes & ears of the world

     seeking it, death’s meaning, tears melted
like wings of wax tapering down to
     maggot pearls strung on stinging lips no

          other poet wants to kiss, a heart
               harpooned by the quills of art darting
                    in & out of this mouth like tongues of sun

                         stitching every sweating strand of
                              suffering I lay down in my work,
                                   an unsolicited audience

                                        sighing & saying of my misery’s
                                             tasteless tapestry—what else?—‘Well, it’s
                                                  typical of a gay man, I guess…’

__________
¹Dylan Thomas, “I, in my intricate image”, [Part] I, [Stanza 1, Lines 1–3], in The Collected Poems of Dylan Thomas: Original Edition: Introduction by Paul Muldoon, published at New York by New Directions Books in 2010; page 37.
²e. e. cummings, “[Poem] 84: all ignorance toboggans into know”, [Stanzas 3–4, Lines 12–14], from his 1944 collection of poetry, 1 X 1 {ONE TIMES ONE}, in 100 Selected Poems by e. e. cummings, published at New York by Grove Press in 2012; page 102.