His love in my veins, my name flaming through his,
passionate poison slow-going in its demise, lust running marathons down
his track-marked thighs, wrapping around twice before relenting, dripping, holding
off for one more night, don’t want to fight his
enthusiasm for infamy, his fantasy of sacrificing himself to this
cursed family, of wedding himself to the devil whose enticement
to vice he shouldn’t trust so easily or well, another
husband running through a thousand and one reasons why he
might be better than the last guy I liked, the

Raphæl to my Asmodeus, handsome and almost wholesome as hell,
pleads not for mercy but for my reassurance that even
though he ain’t the first that he’ll be the last
on my mind, that we’ll break the bed before I
break his heart, that I’ll take it as a compliment
when he says no one gives better head that what
I get from him, payment for this privilege, that whenever
we sweat together he gets wetter than he ever has
with any other, panting, I pull out and tell him,

sell it to him like this, all honest, almost honourable
for once, ‘Look, Babe, many, many men have begged for
the respect you think I’ll pay in exchange for your
life, but forever’s heavy, man, when you’ve never even seen
me in the daylight, this vampiric lifestyle wears thin its
admirers as much as it does its advocates once they
near their climax since mine never comes, not quite as
easily or quickly as you’d like or expect, but when
it does, you’ll wish you’d never tempted the tempter whose

floodgates will keep you from ever again holding tight the
secret I’ll fill you with,’ at which he sighed and
gently wept, handling the neck of my bishop’s turtleneck as
if he were Hendrix fretting a guitar, stocking wood against
the odds which were stacked, spent from touring the lapis
depth of my Olympic-sized swimming pool eyes, drowning in his
own tears as down again he went, milking me to
extend the fading moment, reminding me of my own advice:
all that was past becomes present when you survive it.