i.

Emerging from my echo
chamber of insults breaking
protocol like bread, feast on
this introspection—asking
your Selves as you witness me
asking this (finally): just
how does my ego fit me,
well or so haphazardly?

                    ii.

A stone lion whose roaring bold-
ness makes enemies of many,
a riot of loneliness might
bury you in my bed as a
grave, might take light from the daze you
savour when we meet, however
briefly here on the sheets of my
next work’s pages, or in the fan-

          tasies we share in our heads, sev-

ered by distance bridged by only
playing at innocent, an ac-
complished degenerate making
you an accomplice ignoring
sanguinary yelps testing the
sonorous depths of seraphic
throats, angels who, in the scapegoat-
ing scope of their aching sighs de-

ny Christ second life as a char-
acter in a book, brook no sec-
ond look at the subject, and de-
scend the heights of their vaults to meet
eye-to-eye the infamy of
we who lie open-minded in
the fold of each other’s arms, pro-
fane performers tired of rehears-

          ing silence panting for more, my

words fill mouths with coals whose burn turns
virgins to whores, putting sin in-
to practice all by reading what
might otherwise be ignored, but
why this hollering as a cov-
er since no matter what we say
history never stops, why this
bother of performing at all?

                    iii.

          Blowing off critics who call me
          out on being anyone but

someone relatable, Sisy-
phean in the intimacy
of a stranger’s hands being turned
over or scrolled, rolled along be-
fore I can turn them on, I turn
on them who crawl through memories
every one of these pieces
is meant to dissolve, polemics

against a hidden part of me
written without apology
to prevent from being reas-
sembled broken things I would rath-
er not permit passage beyond
these walls I refuse to disman-
tle at all, evasive as age-
less youth anxious as a heist to

          pull it off, this mask I call art
          but will never call ours, this scar.