In Negative Decibels (Black Veil)

                         i.

I’m the blur between psychology and
psychiatry, the almost intentional intersection of
the gothic and the elegant, the
Alchemist’s Apprentice: he traced the sigil
in the salt upon my skin,
a map of stars where once
had been but flesh; the sulfurous
breath of the furnace sighed, as
gold was bled from the lead
of our limbs, and the spirit

                         ii.

rose, uncoiling like smoke, through the
narrow chimney of our shared breath.
Whatever powers you obey, bereavement requires
building an entire new wardrobe, outward
display of inner sorrow, open the
eye of the lock, spiritual Chernobyl,
from a dead black to a
dull lead colour, stages of distress
build a grave for a secret,
for a delicate relic, the salt

                         iii.

water is a slow-motion incinerator, farewell
to Nova Scotia’s wealth of tragedy
worthy of deposit in a Gloucester
Island Memory Pit, backfill its grave
with a curse tablet written facing
down. The Why of the Sect,
the When of the End, the
Who of the Enemy making an
ass of himself as if the
receptacle of a man is the

                         iv.

spectacle, out of focus but getting
in touch with being non-linear, half
whore, half martyr, wholly star, sensual
centaur splintering to shards in the
fragmented narrative of my breaking heart’s
filmic noir, taking place in parts,
part art, part slaughter, shard of
a mirror light winters far riding
a tide of scandal, accumulating emotional
residue. Vanity of a lie lived

                         v.

on celebrity’s periphery destroyed by iconoclasts
the way a funeral director sells
a corpse back to its family
as a product, I am Orion
belting sparks welding with wet voice
what whelps of noise my choice,
in my art, I choose to
bruise the sky whose nitrate dark
film parts, where thunder goes when
it dies, fulgurite pearling pilloried cries,

                         vi.

its crackling cell’s unspooled arc splits
apart as the bolt of my
voice lightnings across, that my mourners
who look up might be in
awe of not what once was,
but what never will be seen
after us just because this is
a poem with heart and every
poem, as every heart, must end,
must stop its plodding drip drop.