Tangled embrace of satyrs waking,
naked testimony of scars like
ancient cuneiform baked into that
bed’s aching tablet of flesh, that sweat-
fertile patch of chest, its oasis
where hearts dwell until altered, its
velvet lush of lust flavours a taste
of which martyrs, where cursive tendrils

of brunet curls transgress modesty
to scorch fragrant-sweet truths the incensed,
drenched bitterness of which he hasn’t
breathed in yet, thick damage which translates
reliquaries of heedless kisses
lips of pathetic peasants, headless
kings, and yet nameless vagrant strangers
have pressed wet against to grasp, no one

yet has understood, comprehended
well, the monumental-heroic
going-forth-alone along-their-path’s
demanded of weekend-weakened men
since their beginning when, cautioning
with words the haughty-curious who,
all verbs and no respect, his body
shelled, rejected as I have since all

his excuses for not wanting to
let me caress what they failed in their
lusty conquest to appreciate
then as they should have, how I do now,
touching to my head his loneliness,
tender in its chaos my thoughts find
rest, its warmth of shadow an autumn
my bones’ own follows down into pants

we shed, musk ransoming all showing,
this unknown, unpublished version of
us worth beholding in silence, since
sound can be so overwhelming in
dimlit moments on which dusk descends
full until dawn rouses respect we
end wanting to be possessed by, hands
no wealth of affection can open

now, no matter how heavier the
burden of being needed seems, how
with such groaning tenacity we’ve
grown to be so bold, how such soulless
entities hold onto lies of worth-
less-ness we would rather believe, not
forgiving in when anxiety
is poetry, when the end begins,

ruin running around again, rubbing
off into rubble what truths won’t be
there soon, how no longer subtle is
this cycle following the circle
of the Self we choose to remove and
return to, how so much sharper are
these shards of a mirror when into
hearts they fall, plunged like daggers, eyes which

sober one the way an iceberg’s pierce
does the side of a sinking vessel
seas all swallow soon enough, splinters
to splatters parts of us he marks off
with silence hinting at hidden thoughts
only fingers can decipher, blind
enemies envious of our tongues,
breeding in the heat without a sun.