i.

In the furnace of its own burning,
in the forest of its yearning’s wilderness

withering to trembling kindling, this
kid’s virginity needs its getting rid of,

a love destroyed in the fire that created
it, wax smiles of pretend innocence

melting off every inch of its
edges the way a birthday candle’s does, all

over us, echoes exclaiming as
they rise from a waiting grave, “So, if I’m not

                    ii.

afraid, then how am I brave?” If I’m
not mistaken, then, though not friends, we’re twinned fiends,

a coming together of two solitudes,
pouring out our Selves until only

bare starlight barely fills the cavern
of this lantern our nudity ignites each

night, illuminating a stage erected
at the crossroads as though it were a

gallows through the trap-door in the floor
of which dancing steps pass as life does through death’s

                    iii.

waiting gate, down into the sewer
grate of this place where we meet, greeted each time

as one long expected, as though once
anticipated by the sages, as the

scions of the ageless ancients, as
unchanging agents of provocation, sent

settling into our wicked ways, as
ones whose come’s a coveted substance, strangely

nourishing, divine, devious, devoted
to being wanted, and desired, in

                    iv.

their delirious curiousness,
by our manhandling’s mixed messes its varied

and various viscous facets reflect bliss
better than any diamond does,

who better than two princes who resent youth
to pollute its illusions with filthying

truth, granite-gripping brutes fisting both
Enoch’s Pillars, those babbling towers

bubbling over with whispers of secrets which
are the Pyramids holding up the

                    v.

heavens each tears through, paws in ripping
applause howling without pause at how far off

civilization has been, the sound
of falling cities listens to the voices

of gods in the leaves, the means by which
the book of nature speaks, to seek after food

under bark of trees, the sound of no
moment, only concealed grief released as we

open graves of minds by the fire of
a thousand lights, hearts guiding hands down into

                    vi.

pants, nights errant into the chapel
perilous to perform with fingertips our

thighs’ questioning of Proteus, and
in this protean interrogation get

to its meaning deep beneath surface,
that these geniuses are just the ghosts of one’s

distinguished ancestors, flickering
images, sea-changing movies refusing

to keep still, serpentine memories
who leave the grave and return home thieving each

                    vii.

our features to weave into something only
our bodies hungry as they are could

ever possibly believe, that what
chimæra we seek we perceive of our Selves

to seem a brilliant Creature with dark,
witching, gypsy eyes, raven tress, and lips the

twinned pillows of which are together
secret treatises on the sacred art of

making love, their perfection’s vision
less visionary with ours more than enough.