New Pornographies
i.
It’s the conceit of the
villagers who wonder at the
magnificence and tragedy of me,
a prayer for my death
written by them in glimpsing
my decay, my ruin an
occasion none want to delay.
The privilege of those who
live through history is that
they become unsentimental. Pouring out
ii.
my heart feels like pouring
cement, head over heels hitting
pavement. Warden, quarantine the sacred!
Hermits with kaleidoscopic shards of
lantern hearts kerosene kisses conspire
to shatter apart. An upswelling
of repressed emotion, corrosive ejaculations,
when death is announced we
shout with Bacchic frenzy for
him to have us, to
iii.
devour flesh as Yahweh does
Jesus, or Saturn does his
children, not to feed him,
but complete this abandon. The
way desire obeys no timetable,
in my moment of authorial
undress, in duress, enduring this
burden’s mess, transcribing the vocabulary
of sex between men, penning
an erotic almanac charting unfulfillment,
iv.
without atonement intoning, “Sex is
always better on the page.”
Rip from this, then, the
agony of having now to
contend with both your passion
at play (the theatre) and
your passion playing out (the
suffering of your health, very
Hot Messiah) has, no doubt,
some parallel our lapsed Catholicism
v.
might take-up in an instant
to underscore the just deserts
of having deserted its course,
or somesuch brimstone. Don’t reach
for any abyss, this is
just the precipice, so don’t
leap. You can always back
away from a ledge, return
from the edge. The unpunished
vice is getting away with
vi.
discovering a new one. You’ll
no longer enjoy the elements,
you’ll perish by the death
you threatened, exiled to oblivion
gasping, drowning in a fit
of furious congress, mercantile love
goes on to get off
killing itself, purchases freedom the
way any suicide does, touching
on something else unwritten, trickling
vii.
out of existence an echo
wept into a glass cloud
erases, tells through television skin
bruises glisten, the hue of
freezer burn, that what truth
rots beneath returns. It’s murder
in absentia, burning pictures of
her on this altar where
we meet in the overwhelm,
a corpse left to rot
viii.
to preserve her modesty. A
rushed group project the night
before eternity. Accidents of desire
when jerking off feels like
eating fast food, you move
in the gloom like a
white flower surrounded by flesh
and led to where what
I find beautiful offends almost
accidentally. The way atheists may
ix.
savour in the insult of
an unbeliever’s assault on the
name of another’s pissed-on saviour,
confessional as an understall flamer
playing limbo thrusting deeper beneath
a toilet paper dispenser, piano
fingering some imagined stud, in
not out of a rut
then out of it, in
pursuit of love’s antithesis, that
x.
ship sailed and sank ages
ago. Upmarket brothel mandated to
disappear into history. Crooning through
the static of radio silence,
the devil has no corner
to hide in a round
room. The way shadows give
breath to statues. Ritual sin.
You don’t believe, but do
you understand? A heart’s assault
xi.
a result every time when,
with all the angel lust
of a cadaver erection, the
rigor erectus of a crucified
Jesus, what enters the body
through the senses leaves its
imprint on the spirit. The
way a funeral’s a celebration
where you cry. The discovery
of the lost name of
xii.
God committing atrocities at the
altar of my passions inscribes
for me new pornographies in
the dark nude of steepled
fingers charisma ensues, consumes with
slant kindness an inching vision
of what embrace undoes, incites
in an instant an uncoupling,
unwanting the once-was to room
in its emptied tomb two
xiii.
truths thumbs never touch, not
when fingers do their lingering
best to extinguish rude libidos,
as fists crush throats before
kisses can be swallowed below
lips death touches as though,
punishes as if, he were
allowed to strangle from Us
his gift, a version of
masculinity that denies Their nature.
