i.

Not until it is can
this pooling of love which
has been dripped by that
hooded head be called a
kiss, how its lightning runs

cobra coils around your fist,
marathoning that instrument’s veinous frets,
its neck a thick third
arm, or leg, vascular as
a godhead sweating under the

weight of another world’s prayers,
how played you must feel,
coerced into this performance as
if miracles were what you
offer for men such as

myself to purchase, minstrel fingertips
awash with a mess of
oil blurring to wax, cooling
a scalding column’s monumental tears
to wrinkled rivulets candled from

its cradled caress to paint
my face as if it
were your canvas, these candied
lips impressed by the aim
of your thrust, gripping the

                    ii.

intent of your relentless wrestling
against them in a contest
my mouth hosts for those
belligerents this war of ours
on decency visits upon every

reader expecting from me something
other than a description in
unsolicited explicit poetical detail of
my latest conquest, as if
the infamy of my erotic

odysseys precluded being relived again
and again until even those
ashamed of it for me,
since nothing in my experience
abhors the acuity of this

wit, nor elicits any sentiment
of regret, my insatiable libido
works as counterfeit currency does:
to be spent, how each
of my neopuritan critics observes

in these obscene stories that
of themselves they worry might
surface before they can bury
it, too late, armageddon enthusiasts,
your brimstone my lake of

                    iii.

fire resists, for the facial
I describe is one none
other than someone else’s lover,
likely yours for I never
permit anyone longer than a

night or a few minutes
to be mine, failed to
deny my mind its memory,
a kind of plenary indulgence
for those lapsed Catholics who

comprise so much of my
audience, vice victorious in the
eyes of those blinded by
its vicarious licentiousness, pontificating as
I am in this meta-digression

on how lush, how vivid,
life truly is for those
who have the balls to
live it, now where was
I before your sigh interrupted

my panting excess? For everything
there is a price, even
hedonists decline decadence when offered
a chance to gripe on
those envious of their crimes.