i.

A guest or a prisoner, in
the heat of the southern months,
in the souring of your mouth,
ripples of breath wrinkling mirrors press
out things I’d rather not pronounce
for fear of repeating those songs
you seem always to sing when

                    ii.

about to be resurrected in presence
of some poor personage reflected by
this antique language the arcane æsthetics
of which manage only to make
stranger the arrival of that angel
made stronger when you caricature within
your frame’s more dangerous angles their

                    iii.

wings you feather with falling laughter
fading into layers of shadows the
way sunlit clouds tinge the gild
of their edges with pillowing dusts
of dusk as they drop, thrust
through gradations of darkness until sunlight
no longer can touch, so whenever

                    iv.

my glance evades yours in this
glass mages cursed ages before my
own birth ever even came to
pass, with vanity of a more
sobering sort my avoidance dances its
flirting with, this crazy desire of
mine, this insatiable wish which drives

                    v.

me forward, yes, that I’d rather
live than fulfill your repurposing of
my flesh as a vessel to
inhabit instead of this glass I
look never upon in passing, no,
lest what you seek come to
pass, and what dirt of my

                    vi.

mortal clay slips through its hours
and turns years left to days
past, distilling disturbed earth to death,
through which returns to dust my
Self your thirst’s quest to possess
purchases with that sinister breath, that
chill of verses dripping from the

                    vii.

silver my face will never warm
with its fever’s temperature your frigid
literature tempts, for I have no
blush left, nor any fuck, yet
to give your symptoms of an
image poorly limned, armless as you
are in this battle of wits.