For rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry.
          —1 Sam 15:23¹

                    *

Jonathan, out of his love for David, adjured him again, for he loved him as himself. Jonathan said to him, ‘Tomorrow will be the new moon; and you will be missed when your seat remains vacant. So the day after tomorrow, go down all the way to the place where you hid the other time, and stay close to the Ezel stone. […]As for the promise we made to each other, may the Lord be witness between you and me forever.’
          —1 Sam 20:17–19, 23²

                    i. Led by Honey Dripping from a Rod (As a Fly to Shit)

Every desire I follow leads to
you, my spirit the substance on
which your fire acts, how something
that you want you must forget
sits well with me, fills my

head with a tacit necessity of
effusive emptiness, collapses after short circuiting
every party, deadens my fashional sensibility
for melodramatics to more rational casuistry,
confesses a red in my ledger,

burdens until turned fully light in
the loafers, warns me to go
further, to go for the just
cause not just ’cause, let passion
transmute anger to averted disaster, alchemize

animosity from self flagellating martyrdom to
artistry fluent in prophecy, amoral paramour
more into marital arts than martial
ones, fighting off war with love,
whiplashes of its froth what torture

my masochist heart wants, I am
your monster other hunters run after,
after you bolt, run from my
disastrous demands the way a damaged
dog does from a damned bastard

of cruel master, yes, a toss
up between being eaten and even
being, to no longer exist so
long as I taste of bitterness
that’s been sweetened is more than

enough, our velvet tongues wrinkled together
rubbing against the double edged haloes
under the bent blades of which
saints we crush on call us
to rush in for a kiss,

lips opening their head to reveal
a skull filled with pomegranate seeds,
conceding to Santa Muerte divulged details
of devilish deeds, ganging up on
thought with gargantuan talk gushing over

how hot you are when you
walk the coals of my coat’s
tails, my shadow longing for your
casting off, getting to know someone
else is lust’s cause, a suicide

mission enticing two strangers to glimpse
themselves in the mirrored eye of
an angry god blinding us all
with anguished sighing, winking, lying, prying
open what hurts most inside us,

twining, twilighting twinkled foil through pores
its web of silver stitches into
stars, coining crocks of every well
sucked cock’s counterfeit currency constellating scars
into a false partnership, fading interest

after inflation drops dividing what gets
touched from what gets felt, relishing
what relic gets lost in translation
as much as we both were
wont to worship one another getting

                    ii. How We Came to Pass on the Morrow (Preferring, Instead, Yesterday’s Bed)

each other off, memories of that
are enemies to us now, after
the thaw, solid to soft, as
much power in being seen as
there is in seeing, any god

whose existence is contingent on being
believed in needs to be obliterated
or occulted until no longer adulterated
by such vanity’s impurity, wait long
enough and anticipation itself walks off,

crosses barefoot eternity’s river without pause,
here comes my breach of our
exclusivity clause, non disclosure for naught,
faulting the close of this, the
second Elizabethan Age, for curing nothing

but making seem better every disease
an opportunity wearing a disguise, thus
the cosmos pauses, halts telegraphic, full
stops until gravitas dashes in to
dot our thoughts with gravity’s boot

prints, bruises and wounds rubbed raw,
two tools abused by truth, consuming
our cowardice surrounded by the chaos
of public ignorance in a den
of commerce, we talk in structured

silence, bank on witnesses giving us
this finish’s accountability as if they
gave a fuck, or were even
our audience, accordingly we instruct our
palms not to swat at flies

but to want, how now and
then I make and made awful
your sweat perfuming our shaken bed,
imagine us both tonguing his hole
in the most soulful kiss, this

egregore of our tryst eager to
expand its consciousness, comeliest servitor of
our incompatible ambitions’ infidelity, eclipsing our
nimbuses with clouds of unprincipled certainty,
heady hedonist, the numerology of my

body is complementary to my artistry,
my symbology more numerous than his,
demiurge in a deluge, some might
even say I’m a Spiritual Whoreor,
and to still several others more,

a Spirit Animal, furry and fiery
as a meteor with my comet
tail beard and scorching metaphors even
when I’m not being metaphorical, #CatchARisingStar,
et cetera, be careful who you

fall for…every daredevil’s speeding car
eventually crashes, even the most judicious
use of a genius’ limited wishes
can manifest into happening the most
ludicrous occurrences, perishes without prejudice every

last remnant sentiment of your innocence,
torches it to ashes no phœnix
recognizes, only resents having traveled so
far to end up resenting it,
thus a sense of humour is

                    iii. Two Messengers Denying What They Saw the Prophets Prophesying (Mythologizing Lives Lived)

imperative, as you should by now
know, and better had you known
then, men who don’t do levity
don’t do me, comedy is one
of the keys to my heart’s

treasury, though no one else has
succeeded in making me laugh as
much as my father, and even
Byron, my one own, lone wolf,
antiheroic surrogate Other, the first ever

celebrity (indeed, he coined the term
in a letter to friend R.
C. Dallas, February 17^th, 1814, to
describe his fame’s deleterious effect on
him, megastardom’s malignant melancholy setting in

already then, after only his first
hit’s publication, the original overnight sensation,
his time on this planet a
flame already flickering: “I am become
a celebrated victim of my own

fame, a veritable Celebrity…” jaded from
so much excess and hedonism his
massive success more distressed him with
than distracted him from, grappling with
its rabid, ravenous appetite for destruction

crafting neologism after neologism, after jizzing,
I suspect, every poet’s classic coping
mechanism, sex has always been death
by escapism, badass iconoclassicist punning, as
he was, the Latin celebritas, now

how is that for creating content?),³
oh how I worship him, he
whose life laid the very blueprint
and pattern all stars since have
unknowingly followed until faltering, eclipsed by

their own image personal mythology had
a huge role in cultivating, how
he knew infamy just as intimately
as he did global renown in
his experience of his own meticulously

documented existence, pre Internet, how it
is inevitably fleeting, being admired, being
amusing, being someone, being something, easily
forgotten except for quotation, even then
more often misinterpreted than appreciated for

any revolutions inspired or riots incited,
but what is eternal is one’s
work, so work me before this
poetry of our time together is
over, Sir, yours is the next

stop and could you bear disembarking
without ever really having gotten off?
Jawing on this turkey like it’s
my last meal or the ass
I didn’t get to eat, let’s

not get petty over the carcass
of a lost dream’s missed opportunity,
you need me to speak truthfully
and I delight in writing what
school children will forever be forbidden

                    iv. When There Was an Image in the Bed (Idolatrous Pillows Kisses Slit)

from ever reading, a rushing of
wind as the sound of angels
leaving, pulling from the eaves crisped
breaths destined to death by those
whose ears fall deaf to consequence,

meager circumstances eager to forget the
space between breaths, bones no longer
attached to sacrificed flesh, the light
between houses, a broken home’s jaggèd
cliff off of which forgiveness staggers

inebriated toward its own oblivion, masking
tears with kisses no solemnity inhabits,
only mimics, thickening with twisting knife
thrusts of intensity this ritual, stabbing
back onto the ledge the fool’s

foot toeing its edge, how every
ended journey begins again, ordeals drawn
as cards are to be dealt
with, squiggled sigils making happen a
path through its wilderness of transgression

more toward the baffling solace of
another question’s forest than the destination
of an answer, asking him if,
by chance, he ever happened to
notice how impartial, how indifferent, the

Universe is to its inhabitants, moving
around like chess pieces, when the
Universe itself wants their multifarious variations
of instructions, dictations of intents, on
standby since everything’s origin, how patient

creation has been waiting since man’s
preoccupation with his own destruction to
align itself with his true will,
to make opportunity happen, to fulfill
wishes, faith has no place in

an equation where god exists only
if believed in by human unintelligence,
that mortal distortion of the proper
order of the world mortals call
monotheism fools no one at all,

scrawls on the wall of this
metaphorical brothel doggerel which is neither
poetry nor metaphorical, “Do they sell
pussy by the pound in this
cat house?” a post the likes

of which persists and appalls, more
problematic than ten commandments to follow
and comment upon, the victim’s narrative
so in vogue a tough pill
to swallow, now that everything which

was once tart is now offensive,
expressing transgression neither wanted, warranted, welcomed,
nor art, how often I wonder
if ours is the same heart,

and we the teeth of two
rumours chewing it apart, feasting on
feeling wanting for what we never
were but think we still are,
perverts who choose pleasure over partnership.

__________
¹“The First Book of Samuel: Otherwise Called, the First Book of the Kings”, Chapter 15, Verse 23, in “The Old Testament” of Holy Bible: King James Version, published at Grand Rapids, Michigan by Zondervan in 2007; page 196.
²“I Samuel”, Chapter 20, Verses 17–19 and 23, in “Nevi’im: The Prophets” of Tanakh: A New Translation of the Holy Sciptures According to the Traditional Hebrew Text: Torah, Nevi’im, Kethuvim, published at Philadelphia by The Jewish Publication Society in 1985; page 451.
³Lord Byron to Robert Charles Dallas, from London, February 17^th, 1814, autograph letter in the collection of The Huntington Library, Art Museum, and Botanical Gardens at San Marino, California; Manuscript 7398.