For my Expeditus—

                    i.

Broken man breaking in
open secrets no one
since my beginning met
your end has yet gone on
scratched record as having

ever spoken, no, not
again, never hit send
when poking bare wide wounds
others’ eyes hiding closed
minds assume you choose to

     expose, but never once

chose to subject to yet
another abuse, new
confusion to let bloom
what worm consumes before
its due my produce, sour

cantankerous canker
soaring far over my
prolific wit-enriched
soporific sweat-drenched
mellifluous forest

     of pomegranates, my

euphonious truisms
which are eloquent filth
less crude yet nuanced once
serviced with the burn of
lips which, stripped of useless

euphemisms every
crucifix virgin mouths
asterisks have stitched closed,
turn from blasphemous to
blessed, transgressive magic

     spelling out what no one

ever really says, but
thinks nonetheless, diddling
idylls, idolatrous
dolly ditches of split
eyelids pried wide and sewn

in silenced sighs by lines
of verboten verse worse
when inside as though inked
with blood dripped in holy
wells of mouldy books, their

                    ii.

spines throbbing crotches of
decomposing thoughts, plots
thinking of curses and
misfortunes reversed by
mirrors faced inward to

be forced opened, wroughting
irony, defiant
& dispirited dirges
encouraging of dirt,
persuading persons of

     questionable motives,

deprived of morals but
not morale, to purchase
souls I sell, tortured, yes,
but somehow endlessly
lovable, powerful,

this distressing mess of
many grandiose mixed
messages, my twisted,
rat-nested, synthesis
of mythic, neurotic,

     impossibly complicated

sinister leaves
are the impure fruit of
the preternatural
philosophers, ignored
fodder doctored by those

daimon dogs who, bereft
of gift, sniffing my stench
of eccentric talent,
inevitably will
come after my fall to

     pore over what I now

scrawl, panned perennial
doggerel, left hand-penned
fertilizer for tales
I have yet to tell and
still to live, which no one

will come to comprehend,
eternal feed for sullen
perpetual caterpillars,
word-burdened burned
elephant folios

                    iii.

forged for fiends all the more
beastly for being seen
feasting on seed, war spoils
ravaging the cycles
of others’ dead centuries’ worse

arbitrary
calendars, perceived as
obscene perverts for each
reading rhymes which ring ears
that eyes deceive, tonguing

     whispers of ancient loves

that vanish in tears, the
apple in my garden
with flesh hardened, dark man,
skeleton-keyed hip-hop-
crisy needs badly to

be beaten lest my lust’s
inner-ape awaken
only to seem faint and
arrhythmic when my heart
bleeds blush pulses which speak

     even to those whose feet

move before what depth heads
received can think, stolen
fire swallowed before those
gods guarding it can blink,
at once Promethean

& bittersweet, completely
Icarean & fleeting,
falling and rising in
supplication, crashing
in passionate haste, base

     hubris attunes liars

to sing what truth’s Muses
only imply, since to
write otherwise would nigh
implicate those whose sly
beauty duty binds to

remind us the creamy
Hippocrene from which we
drink is no latte but
Lethe, actually,
fools drunk on the morbid

                    iv.

forgetfulness of our
mortality, always
on the brink, poetry
is blind insight gaining
in sight losing Paradise, more

judgmental gents,
yes, more philhellenic
expat Parisians than
partisans, dilettantes
not Parasites, plutôt

     républicain que Republican,

disastrous
Pyrrhic-victorious
pariah artists lost
and ever since willing
into existence our

misunderstood, under-
appreciated big
geniuses, kids longing,
longing, longing for that
elusive something no

     one else is wanting, to

be working against the
world working on advising us
to de-vice us
by hooking us up to
devices, blitzkrieging

and blacklisted op-eds
Oppenheimering our
critics to bits, haunting
columns the shadows of
which are those socially-

     distant, dissonant hymns

of yesterday’s been-forgotten,
already-zilched
civilizations crumbling while
crawling, gasping,
zeroing-in, inching

toward oblivion’s
precipice, destined for
dustbins, to furnish scorched
coffins, fossils we will
retool for fuel, ruin

                    v.

to run toys we run out
to buy-up at world’s end,
after having slouched toward Bethlehem,
maudlin
Eliots phoning-it-

in for the entertainment of
ETs whose lone
mission it has been to
entrain us to welcome
our annihilation,

     to compost this planet

we called home, wastelanding
imposter doctors fucked
in the head & addicted
to the cure, we are sick,
no different than your

garden-variety
poseurs afflicted with
the desire to search for
more pleasure sooner than
never could ever afford, no,

     never then and

not anymore, no, sir,
no matter how expansive empire’s rush,
the one
thing no king can delegate is
being himself,

war on your Self until
you wear thin its onion
skin, sooted layers of
illusions reeking of
smouldering kohl-eyed confusion

     cold, clueless hands

unbend from prayer to pretend sin
loosened, unbed
the getting of a grip,
transfixed as if dead, led
hell-bent, as it is when

spirits fly to the light,
making the conversational
controversial,
angels, now, now, now, fall
tonight, tonight, tonight!