No. It’s our secret. All I can tell you is that, discreet or not discreet, once you are outside it will be quite impossible for you ever to reveal anything of what goes on within these walls.
          —De Sade¹

          An Encyclical Cycle for Those Touch Troubles
                    With Its Tempting Trifle—

                    i.

From this window fell that shadow
those who know won’t tell of now, nor
tomorrow. So impure is its
tale, we who were there instead of

spitting, swallow all details. What,
then, of the getting down men close
to coming reveal in furtive
promises they, after gotten off,

having been spent, discredit to
high heaven, disavow to hell’s
bowels? How could their shoulders’ thrown
chill, viscous that snow, that missive

          whispered across wet flesh in those
          shaken beds this aching touch with

                    ii.

bitten kiss and licked wound sent howls
dripping, breaking love’s breath as if
it were whipped skin, ripped, sluts by slits
torn, altogether, to new, soft

form, nuder, even, than ever
it was before, from liquid glow’s
warmth misting, then rippling, to bent
fingers of dripped lightning above

twisted limbs drizzling, twitching toes
convulsive, kicking then frigid,
cold secrets my pen, undertowed,
yet undeterred, by pundits

          only emboldened, melt from out
          its victims’ frozen corpses this

                    iii.

desire to be remembered whole
after our fall thaws hard beneath
the cruel world’s most injusticed,
motiveless notice until blood

let by hands with unseen saws to
be left dissolved all that hallowed
splendour which thought tends to splinter,
all that was taught, pulsed without pause,

with no words at all? Heat, followed,
teaches what no language reaches.
Experience, more than sorrow
experienced, heals. Wisdom’s gift,

          received, destroys wishes. Trust, though,
          not truth, is what’s imperative.

                    iv.

Verse, then, more responsive when those
after whom we’ve lusted deny
all knowledge of having fed lips,
held hips, gripped by its handles love,

refused our bodies nothing, but
responding in silence to hope’s
carnal challenge of which each boned
participant is, at once, both

casualty and victor. Know
sex, however, is no contest,
it’s war whose reward is to stow
spoiled pleasure plundered from wicked

          whores whose treasuries’ hordes o’erflow
          with wealth every soldier lives

                    v.

for and is there to perform goals,
and games, and plays, and devours as
gluttons do feasts from others’ flipped
plates, and deserves each to eat up

and disorder with their porn’s force
blowing open perception’s closed
back doors, farce fingering locks those
purchased entice and encourage!

Stain upon sheets what soils pillows,
and moan, Muses, these things we need
in our mortal sleep: bravado
and resolve ribald enough, if

          you please, to keep from waking those
          creeping things dreamed, self-abusive!

                    vi.

For, in seeking to be sought, how
foolish I was to have loved much
having, by them, been caught useless
in disabusing fugitives

of such confusion by my sin’s
lewdness wrought! Fleeting not, ’t’was no
time for some, opposed to exposed
craving undisguised, to vanish

gasping from my bound yet unclothed
presence, asking how it was found
to be worth the effort so bold
and tasteless a waste of Christmas

          night? ‘Christ was,’ I hissed, ‘fond, also,
          of bondage when nailed by men kissed!’

__________
¹The Marquis de Sade, The Misfortunes of Virtue in The Misfortunes of Virtue and Other Early Tales: Translated with an Introduction and Notes by David Coward, published at New York by Oxford University Press in 2008; page 89.