After the books of Samuel, an old-souled, foul-mouthed Jonathan to a latter-day, quaintly-saintly David, a post-mortem argument, overheard through the paper-thin motel walls in the strip-mall halls of the crumbling palace of a surrogate Saul, on the eve of their parting, legendary lovers moving on from it all, foregoing having known so biblically, and so well, each other, their bodies, and each other’s worlds, an obsequy for their bawdiest work—

                    i.

Peel from their painted paper globes
the broken husks of pulp wrapping
up the lantern-shaded gasps of

your eyes, a brusque crop-failing dusk
dusting over too many times
those serialized navels closed

like novels in the drugstore check-
out line, aching Agent Orange
jungle temples of pawed holes tear-

jerked drops of helium fill so
openly with wide-spread secret
surprise suspense detonates from

inside, growing uncertainty
principled by sown sacrilege,
privileged enough to survive

their closing off, to arise and
arrive barrel-chested in the
beryl vault brawl of the sky whose

bowl others call heaven but you
deny, have you never looked up
from another’s lies and asked why?

                    ii.

Silk sighing stringing into song
those baby blues I eschew, hazy
pools whose lapis lazuli fools

ev’ryone but me, favouring
much more, as I do, true brunets
root-hazel relents its chestnut

velvet to pastel-over with
ambergris-fuming coals, those kohl-
smouldering, trend-bucking, pummel-

you-in-the-back-alley-before-
letting-you-pound-me, plummeting
jet-pupiled gems versed well in dark-

humoured allure schooling me in
what it means to breed the mutt out
of my smutty poetry, psalms

only we understand, these hot-
headed, under-handed demands
of readers we make seem cooler

than they really are, not nearly
so simply as things ever seem,
never so swiftly as bombs fall.

                    iii.

Shell of a man, can you see now
any skull beneath the skin which
crawls? This cracked bulb enlightened by

the fight to survive winter, to
rhyme with this bitterness my thirst
for former wellness your kiss dried,

its death the plunge required twice for
new life to emerge again, my
rebirth eager to knife through veils

the meaning of these mysteries
by hiding in full sight of our
disaster’s audience, splicing

between this web’s tightly-woven,
meticulously-crafted lines
of blushing-sweet, tongue-in-cheek, deep-

digging, ditched-wish-fulfilling hym(e)ns
panty-dropping hints rubbing off
secrets inscribed with myrrh ink on

virgin parchment, searing through this
atrocity’s exhibition
wisdom wiser men deny them.