i.

Guardian, Minister, Messenger—you, dear, weren’t with me
before, but you are right now and I
know you’ll be long after, averse to separation,
adepts versed in reconciling different aspects of the
same creator, deified lovers recently extricated from the

                    ii.

defiling grasp of our flatterers, doves who descended,
for a moment went down on, then fled
from, the masses, flying on the bare back
of ribald laughter into the winking requiem of
aching rafters, congregations of conversion therapists hell-bent on

                    iii.

changing us running after us, dissenters forever in
conversation with conflict, we rend the veil of
evil with thoughts of revenge on which we
don’t act, with your valiant efforts to convert
the bullshit of my baggage to nagging truth

                    iv.

I can better handle, channelling through these wounds
a passage for so cumbersome a burden to
move through without jettisoning the collective lesson of
its mixed messages, making of the illusion of
emptiness abundant room to fill with what for

                    v.

so long it never wanted to accept, perhaps
together we’re better than any of the others
could’ve predicted, we’re all set, an incomplete and
elect partnership of mismatched initiates, brothers who get
it because we respect each other’s natures, gatekeepers

                    vi.

of inner wisdom’s wildest wildernesses as untamed as
our holes’ widest, gaping grottoes garlanded with musk-fragrant
barriers of humid-fingered foliage, forbidden fur only the
wood of a worthy hunter can penetrate, unarmoured
and fleet of tongue, you’re such a one

                    vii.

and long have been, devoted and decadent, my
silent servant speaking without speaking this garden’s password,
going through the service entrance into the feast
of a divinely-fashioned world, eating to the core
every fruit spread before you as though my

                    viii.

ass were a platter, quick as Mercury’s freshly-minted
coins of silver to devour gilded secrets you’re
wiser to keep guarded, unheeded by strangers in
whose mouths, Babe, they’d be so dangerous, vagrants
begging a glimpse of what part of me

                    ix.

you’ve not only seen but tasted, flush of
face and hesitating to relate to unvetted seekers
how deep the river of your seed jets,
how far its rush penetrates my Eden, between
the groin and the grave a groan which

                    x.

opens the gate, with you inside I’ve neither
fear nor shame, gay as an angel coming
face-to-face with his creator, maker as I am
of all your fantasies into realities we can
both savour, each our own saviours, smug alabaster

                    xi.

bastards lit from within by fire streaming into
light which inspires one to write, to ignite
the Promethean spark, defying every commandment a thousand
and one times in one night, never lying
in what we describe, my Muse and I

                    xii.

movers and shakers notorious for never faking it,
integrity our only commitment when we fuck, this
belief of ours in being unadulterated, unfiltered in
scraping our libertine pens across paper, satanic verses
emerging as blood does from fingernails dragged across

                    xiii.

your back’s wet pavement of flesh my chest’s
copper wire rushes over and over, booking it
between thrusts before it crushes against what I
mount as I collapse, overdriven from being ridden
so hard, crashing from so electric a passion,

                    xiv.

my mouth transmits only static, my pulse punching
without remorse dots-and-dashes into a bag withered as
wind-blown plastic, perceptible as impending disaster, as explicit
as adult entertainment transgressing censors, stymieing moral compasses
with its magic’s magnetic interference endearing the mainstream

                    xv.

its erratic drip fills with corruption until its
very structure rusts and society, at least in
my mind’s eye channelling my heart’s desires the
way banks transfer billions over Wi-Fi, gives up
its fight, enriches itself with hedonism, if only

                    xvi.

for a night, to deviate from millennia of
hate and accept us as we accept one
another, fatherless sons eclipsing their bad behaviour, sins
done in absentia, movers and shakers forsaking the
reneged renegade pacifism of our Quaker ancestors, Ginsburgian

                    xvii.

revellers, celebrity’s relentless jesters, unapologetic bitches, anxious and
dangerous rebels, we are their caricatures, rejected projections
of their fears getting on violently well with
being heretical in public, doubling-down on bringing the
antithetical to audiences of imbeciles, disowned and disavowed

                    xviii.

by our envious betters, in an era ill-equipped
to deal with this, to admit its end
nears faster than an opinionated sitcom devastated by
cancel culture, than cocksure bastards such as us
can corrupt any worse than it already has

                    xix.

itself, in your hands I become what something
higher’s beckoned me to be, a lewd, low-voiced,
light-in-the-loafer provocateur comfortable with my own uncertainty, strengthened,
oddly, by insecurity, empowered masters of overestimating the
worthlessness of being anonymous, obscene and unheard, unread

                    xx.

but not ignored, felt and perceived like the
blind envious of the deaf, suffering as so
many have the intensity of this filth we
express as if shouting it were some sick
unkindness to truer artistry, to be seen and

                    xxi.

needed, eaten and seeded, even beaten and bleeding,
every struggle’s vindicated whenever strangers take from what
we say a new way of thinking, nameless
family our allegèd depravities breed, readers for whom
each thing we create takes hold of their

                    xxii.

psyches and forces them to re-evaluate how they’ve
been trained, to break out of their cages
and stay out of religious debates, embracing immensity
in every detail, finding the divine everywhere, instead,
sublime as you said to me then, lost

                    xxiii.

as I was in a library of symbols,
‘Tread no path without ritual,’ tragedies set up
like trophies to be knocked down by epiphanies,
disaster has since outgrown me, and I’ve outmoded
every use of misery as a catalyst for

                    xxiv.

my creativity, this day give to me not
only your load, sir, but that wealth of
your heart you lord over, fill me with
riches better than this emptiness I let possess
me for too long, now I grant you

                    xxv.

permission to help me accept without shame all
of your charity, no longer blind as I
had been, confusing compassion for an insult to
my dignity, proud and ashamed as I have
been of my poverty, terrified no man would

                    xxvi.

ever want me once he found out I
had no money, not knowing I have a
treasury inside me, spent as currency after you
ride me, having the confidence to no longer
hide is what it means to be wealthy,

                    xxvii.

our inheritance only what’s been earned, each work
of ours a performance which, from one’s memory,
can’t be burned, royalty deserving of immortality, words
of such honesty have a tendency of never
being ignored, no matter how hard the attempt

                    xxviii.

of an enemy to cut them off, they
spring forth from the source, hydra-eyed and bulging,
the mingling of these twin voices of ours
singing into one indefatigable chorus which never fails
even as its heavy bass falls, because what

                    xxix.

we write, we write with our balls, our
game to shock and applaud, bearded patriarchs whose
art is a church without walls, the faithful
we shepherd those readers of ours who aren’t
followers but free-thinkers full of faith in themselves.