i.

Built like a fever the way I burn,
a wicked apocalypticism
in the body turns them all against
every emotion passing through
me, heat spinning on the heads of pens
in their deep wilderness of wildest
peyote dances needs less guile than
a hot head does a willing mouth to

                    ii.

filthy with oft-unspoken thoughts this
tongue opens minds wide enough to dip
just their tips, refills those inkwells with
secrets I sweat, never knowing when
to quit or how, too proud, willfully
ignorant of its method, howling,
impervious to self-censorship,
a reluctant prophet unwilling

                    iii.

to give in to his phœnix, to let
immolation’s craving win, instead
I persist, unfiltered as ashes
too cool to spread their mixed messages
over the heads of this world’s furnace
lest this thick tunic of embittered
wit suffocate the passionate dead
the way my marriage to being so

                    iv.

misread suffered sharing its bed with
so many liars I lost count of
how many times I let some stranger
get away with making my mind go
astray, the rule of enchantment is
that it ends, so, friends, bring together
every black magician of our
era to annihilate god whose

                    v.

ego this is manifesting from
shadow all these accidentally
political events, each of which
offends the uninitiated,
go now, fell the forest of heaven’s
few remaining vigilant angels,
unsettle the tumescent watchmen,
watch then, witness them tumble from grace

                    vi.

as I did once and then again and
again, making sport of being some-
one so unbecoming, assemble
a smouldering parliament devils
rush to sit in on, of renegade
sentiments, of kohl-eyed resentment
too independent to calm with sense,
degenerate dawn calling on one

                    vii.

sacrificial sun, counting on him
never coming down, always rising
to the occasion has always been
my truest calling, my soul’s purpose,
making me less Luciferian
and much more Mephistophelean
than anybody else would admit
to being, let alone believe in.