Look wise, say nothing, and grunt. Speech was given to conceal thought.
          —Osler¹

                    i.

Numerals of ink curling unthinkable
fractals fingering its bowl’s edge
in triplicate search the sloping

ledge of The Hill scorching
with ashen tinge its descent,
by the lengthening of the

shadow telling hours, fogging over
how, this reach indicative of
the loudest silence extending its

echoing presence from between two
twists of gnarled limbs the
fugitive figure bends between those

lone trees, inhibits with pacing,
his footsteps limit to the
gate the posts of which

are those trees’ trunks he
inhabits, this the liminal place,
the west-facing brow of The

                    ii.

Citadel these daggers of darkness
passing headlights only darken with
contrast crawling through, where honest-faced

men dishonest with themselves harken
to experience touch the sleeping
city below forbids, crushes the

pursuit of head, giving and
getting it, the slip of
dick between cheeks, fingertips beneath

lifted and falling garments wet
with anticipation warming bodies forget
as flesh against flesh devours

what scent another sweats, this
embrace most faiths refuse to
forgive, to acknowledge with absolution

for all misdeed by centuries
of misplaced authority misperceived, to
bless instead with acceptance, hence

                    iii.

the maladaptive necessity of these
self-assassinating subversively affirmative secret assignations
the sinfulness of this practice,

ritualistic this performance of perverse
liturgies here, nearer to Pan
than any other pantheon permits

do these twilit devotees wander
pagan and throttling toward fulfillment
from their darkling corners toward

nature’s force their bodies quiver
and tremble and cavort to
converge, to burst forth what

song of postures each anonymous
lover models for each other,
darkest before dawn comes one

without cover of forest who
summons the storm and stress
of this lyre’s hum each

                    iv.

caress, electric and undone, strums,
only to unplug what gets
off, nonsense in the mouth

of anyone else, the way
only men can make one
another blush, intense as fuck

spent in the arms of
men enemies envy for loving
too much the way only

men can make one another
blush, coming together but not
yet to terms with this

ambush of their senses against
what connection’s pleasure words fail
to express, this urging for

its worst scorch the unforgiving
world tells them to ignore,
but here it moans in

          monochrome one colour rumour blurs.

__________
¹Sir William Osler, Aphorism 267 in “The Art” of “[Chapter] V[.] Epitomes” in Aphorisms: From His Bedside Teachings and Writings: Collected by Robert Bennett Bean: Edited by William Bennett Bean, published at New York by Henry Schuman, Inc. in 1950; page 126.