Pour Like Honey

                         i.

The past is
happening quickly, under
the weight of
Puritan centuries, we
will salt the
earth’s wound with
the ashes of
our bruised egos,
circumambulate tombs, pour

like honey a
night with Venus,
a lifetime of
Mercury, a copper
reservoir of silver
tears in a
crucible heart of
sacred flame, judging
me by the

dog-eared chapter of
my life you
happened to arrive
in, darkened emptied
chamber-pot scene guilt-framed,
the demon in
the corner of
my room during
sleep paralysis, particular

                         ii.

friends with solitary
vices, I want
so much to
give you a
pearl necklace, splintered
by bitterness more
thrilling than romance,
more terrible than
fiction, at the

edge of the
world where the
horizon ends between
us, I might
not be rich,
but at least
I’m not poorly
lit, how’s that
for the refrain?

heaping collapse on
the distance between
us two, both
hewn from ruin,
the way Victoria
knew the camera
was a political
weapon, and yet
truer than truthful,

                         iii.

my chiller had
its dread shredded,
symphonic textures with
cinematic dynamics, cursed
by my creator
to wander forever,
what survives when
history tries to
erase itself, you

were expecting a
legend, you ended
up with a
fable, a mourner
ever garbed in
doleful sable, spread
it like a
pandemic of confetti,
don’t garble your

babble, you’re a
dish, and onlookers
must wish to
feast more than
their eyes on
the tongue that
hides behind those
lips, princes prefer
persuasion, spiritually turbulent

                         iv.

sacramental salvage, the
fallout of my
soreceries yet radiates
as it dissipates,
always more to
work, in a
city of a
thousand “unwitting ritualists,”
the one who

knows the ritual
is the only
one who is
truly free of
it, a Nazi
tiger here celebrating
surviving another year
without capture, liquidity
for my estate,

and a monument
to intimidate the
future with my
memory, writing my
own world, built
on the foundation
of my own
words, interrogating enervating
fate as what

                         v.

we want fades
away, are we
lovers or soldiers,
rival sorcerers or
cellmates? self-possessed reprobates
bonding over the
constant threat of
death where the
“act of love”

was inseparable from
the “scent of
the grave,” pistoning
in blushing puncturing
crush punctuating, call
us the Bad
Seeds, as we’ve
New England Planter
grandfathers who never

once imagined their
grandsons would grow
to become this
deviant, my come-sugared
prayer dissolving on
god’s tongue, the
lust of the
goat elevated but
understated, apostasy insinuated.