Beardo in the Bardo

                         i.

A forger of autobiographies,
old mirrors have seen more, rumours
of experiences of god, death, and
the universe, taking the cure

to remove immortality, waters
taken taste of every bleak
sanatorium my wasting disease
left me in, incomplete, impure,

uncertain whether or not even these
desires become proof of their own
fulfillment, if this is it, then, asking
how its ghost now has a map, hand-

drawn, of the heart’s broken sanctuary
rehabilitating passions?

                         ii.

By the evasive muscularity
of water, endearing toward
erasure, atmosphere as ampersand
et ceterates fate’s ligatured

accumulation of details riding
a tide of scandal, novelties
accumulating no emotional
residue swallowing glamour

hollow out cavities within which creeps
like me bury every piece
of sanity we keep for thieves to seek,
paying arrogant deviants

no mind, only without apologies
bestowing renown prurient

                         iii.

kinds mistake, fame made immortality
through outrage, claiming lineage
to light’s bearer by descent, fundament
spoken open by tongue’s heat for

receipt of blasphemous, pacific, cringe
rimmed in as though philosophies
know how to get out of those little hells
these recipients replace your

own memory with electricity
endeavouring against any
empathy to bolt, to empty out, bleed,
kaput, once offered up, once bent

to my debauches, wanting what, always
haunting us, lost, becomes legend.