No need
to distort

what’s not
standard

to be
understandable.
          —Ginsberg¹

A heart that stops to rest dies, love
     is its punishment. To
close the mouth of a wound, a hand
     must reach inside and, with
fangs of fingers and swallowed fist,
     consume the cancer where

it hides. Sunken heads parting lips

     win a long war with thick
semen proficient now in French
     and Portuguese, those tongues
of lovers each receives. Faces
     creamed ivory bathed blank
by beads of freed pearls blanketing

     over milk-white flesh their

flash’s flush curdles, gain mourned loss.
     A soft misfortune’s mess
endured since it serves the purpose
     of unsettling shot nerves
performing beneath the eyes and
     ears of the world the one

rumour whispers only ever

     rehearse, a curse never
uttered by others hurt before.
     From the bellies of brutes
the cries of babes are heard when purged.
     In the ugliness of
their blood-hunger retelling of

     stolen souls in their vain

reselling retailing for far
     less than their death’s true worth.
Funerary urgency, then,
     frenzies them, imprisoned
inner-children abusing nude
     freedom bandages clothe

buried emotions in. Beauty

     a privilege, mercy
prerogatived by kings to give
     themselves if innocent
of imitating blooms fading
     entombed in urns ashes
waiting their turn to fill fall for.

__________
¹Allen Ginsberg, “Written in My Dream by W. C. Williams”, Stanzas 6–8, Lines 11–16, in Poetry (August 1986), published at Chicago by Poetry Foundation in 1986; page 256.