Forbidden Mercies

                         i.

M     uch of my time working is in front
     of a reflective surface, of course, Narcissus with
the backlit black mirror of a mobile telephone
screen, a computer monitor, the bone white of
a book (or blank) page, so I’ve often
motive, means, and opportunity to message the Missus,
princess of my Muses, called to come for
me in a filthy place licked clean, all
feral intelligence and bruised glamour, mortuary cannibal fleeing
ruins carrying secrets that could destroy us, it’s

                         ii.

not a lie, if it’s performance art, if
its widened-thigh invite drips a poisonous bravado, violent
shades of blush and eye shadow dripping jewels
of jet, the paradox of an unseen spectacle,
her name is “Yes.” My own ever is
“Not yet.” I know you cannot meet my
missives word-for-word, but that you glimpse them means
we should ask more, such as what do
we keep in the Underworld? Never why. Everybody
wants to know about me, but few would

                         iii.

actually want to know me, not the way
your ignoring the door means when I open
these veins for you to drink what bleeds
ink until my WikiLeak InfoWars its own cure.
To be sure, ours is a love written
for silent film. Archived panic experienced as forbidden
mercies endured to embrace chaos in an open
sarcophagus unheard, but heeded all-the-more. Glacial erratics that,
oftener slower than they are sore, soft-porn for
us both hardcore scars which veil over the

                         iv.

lamp with sexless music devoid of choruses. Ever
hopeful to never overwhelm you, I am grinning
at this, the plagiarist pugilist author of its
imperious design, bleeding a beast whose cage poisons
it instead of holding it, though my feigned
pain’s phantom patron remains unnamed, anonymously tracing in
his rhythmic idiom of repetitive loss, architecture which
implies intent that outlives the builder, suburban subversive
breaking apart cinematic grammar, you follow me the
way catastrophe always follows prophecy. Focus, instead, on

                         v.

a world that wants to remain blurred. When
a dead father asks his son for a
meal, burn your heart and feed him the
ashes. Ask only if it took away his
thirst. My survivors will vie to license my
funeral rights, misstate lies traced in the shape
of incense glimpsed through a mirror of silver
monochrome, wordlessly scored, stricken by unbiblical  chords, lord,
some places just shouldn’t give your death someone
else’s life. The premise being the only promise.