A Confession in Wet Cement
“Each one salutes me, as he goes,
And I, my childish Plumes,
Lift, in bereaved acknowledgment
Of their unthinking Drums—”
“It’s not the word made flesh we want in writing, in poetry and fiction, but the flesh made word.”
i.
W ritten in whispered breath with
tidal force, softens mirrored shards
washing across windowless façades gawking
gossip, sponges away love at
the brothel gate, embraces enclosure
as escape, wastes away tasting
quaking mouthfuls of hand-coloured plates,
waves of pink light, frothing
neon, pulsing pause, muted witnesses
applauding how criminal it was,
this getting away with us
getting off, the video-hue of
our call a subdued purple
violet crawls, lining the walls
pastel hours paint with panted
tastes, partakes of rehearsed pleasure
until its partly dissolved, poverty
soon discovered, paltry party guests
appall themselves, carries through bodies
the same abandon centuries of
twists plot as their memory
dominates, trafficking in sugared whoredoms,
wordlessly ignoring hunger caking on
thick in spilt increments guiltless
kisses hired men furnish in
nudities perspirations decorate, revenant sentiments
dancing undulatory, reverberating waifs resurrected
desires boredom reanimates, latent lusts
love’s loss awakens, here where
these monasteries in the pleasure
district give whore-next-door, serve Cynosure
tremulously yet tremendously self-assured, indentured
providers hoarding acquired departures held
closer than open sores held
close on the open threshold,
grinning girlies at the grille,
bar none, abandon no life
unexamined, no one left unobserved
this is the chiaroscuro of
painters, novices in museums of
vice and institutions of public
love, spear-ritualists wearing only prayer
masks, knowing the ugly comes
loose ungloved, leaves one fun-infested,
fun-and-festive, et cetera… Myra Breckinridge-ish
silence is the soundtrack of
absence, black like the end
of the world, burnt out
from pretending its warning against
putting off its own prevention
went unheard, bruises recruiting others
to be victims with you
by insisting on rescue, instead
of doing what you have
to, listen: as I am
god, to not believe in
me is blasphemy, every incantation/incarnation
enviously in obligation to a
web of invisible agreements, tracing
burn marks on the floor,
furrowed trails of tears followed
far until swallowed down in
the shadowed moment of a
dissolving hour’s last shallow, howl
out loud of just how
low oceans of time pull.
