i.

In a blazing orchard prayers and fires
overfill the cupped palms of desire,
spill through the latticed rafters of churched
fingers filaments crackling volumes
bent on getting higher; to measure
my own length under the blackening
weight of a shadow, to hang on an
hour another hand heavying down
the plow pounding below the snowy
hunger I am after; dirt under
the nails contages with its filth of
flint ciphers its scratch of light traces
in the tint of obsidian skin
its mirror taints to nude brightness; cut
to: interior – a mending heart –
day, waiting for a reason to go
forward beating the pavement on its
errant stroll toward what is pure gold
only at second sight, a fool whose
contrapposto puts on ice a cool
glide that floats on air, repairs himself;
in stride a heart takes a hit and hits
back, swinging the bat at stagnant blood
knocked turgid into action; sugar
swirling visceral & capillary
through lawless bands attracting again
the canvas of skin against the parched
resistance of which warmth pushes; thin
veils offering the world new glimpses
transitioning into night this hoard
of solar scorching scars into words;

                    ii.

cauterizing closed the gaping wounds
of scholars’ mouths, I am a worm whose
burning under the fig leaf of god
parts waters only to salt them off
the hard way a three-leggèd father’s
soft daughters divide his dying log
among their thighs; trying not to fight
over the size of their portents, spoiled
sibyls whose writhing soils to rusting
anachronism their baptismal gowns;
sacrificial & suppliant, sighing
that this is what they get for knowing
themselves that all oracles are but
the unfortunate bells of nature’s
tired temple peeling off pearls we call
wisdom; I am aswim in my own
fruit biting through the world this loosed tongue
falls upon and flaws, unravels from
its chaste loom every last scruple
of; these crookèd little teeth chewing
your false flag’s freedom to choose into
flapping rags my fragmented lust glues,
transmuting to paper the mummy
cloth of my undoing; a coiled fist
unspiraling its wrist’s python grip
until the budding rose of my choked
foreskin twists loose into full bloom, my
head poking through to shoot thorns making
prophecy of my ruin; bleeding
from this tomb a gushing of whispers
throwing off their crushing chrysalis.