You’ll Know Me in Your Marrow

                         i.

W     ordlessly scored, stricken by unbiblical
     chords, you follow me the
way catastrophe always follows prophecy,
enticed by the fragrance of
your own musk, hard to
ignore, a thirst beyond either
alcohol or water, smouldering after

an apology burns colder, sinful
enough to solder together what
should never be this much
torture, to soldier toward undaunted,
sunlight unwilling to face us,
traces its mockery reflected in
the moon’s face, on the

path of misery, waiting by
night to lay waste to
dreams its absent heat threatens
to eat, retreating only to
be consumed by morning its
reluctance to meet devastates, how
long does it take to

fill a shallow grave? In
a filthy place licked clean,
fleeing ruins carrying secrets that
could destroy us, it’s not
a lie, if it’s performance
art, drips a poisonous bravado,
the paradox of an unseen

spectacle, her name is ‘Yes.’
What do we keep in
the Underworld? Avenging my father,
the only thing I hope
to kill is my pain,
boned down, entombed, dead in
the womb, buried in our

                         ii.

bedroom, we’ve been through enough
to prove even though there’s
no tomorrow, you’ll know me
in your marrow, ruined by
hard knocks in a war-charred
woodland of regretted experiences, a
bloody day at the offering,

administering the holy office of
performing an exorcism, with a
relationship to the invisible realm
you can’t receive what you’re
not willing to accept, I
never paid any attention to
anything people said, and never

took you to be anybody
other than who I knew
you to be in my
inferences, an incremental step back
from my edgiest precipice, waiting
for the threshold choir to
sing me in, a tongue

sent on a perilous errand
ends each kiss with a
bite, exhausting knots of irony,
sustained by the smoke of
sacrifice, the stench of blood,
of flesh cindering to rot,
now by many dark vows,

going about mucking about with
lust, making fun of never
having enough, signing off sending
much and an enthusiasm no
pixels can constrain or convey,
hoping and praying fucking around
changes to love, or something

                         iii.

else we say motivates us
but never does, bruises from
the jewels, from where your
merriment sent forth into me
again in unrelenting, unrepentant increments,
undulating waves of predicaments, unmitigated
fear meant to educate me

in the more sinister ways
of worse men, how this
can become habit-forming, more important
than it should be, then,
charisma and hypocorisms blending with
bending truths into bleeding abuses
too cute to consider doing

without, codependence a silent experiment
its own doubt ends in
a shout, severing tethers, a
curse can only be undone
by finding faith in the
hate of its origin, magic
is real, not quantifiable, but

demonstrable, ride the snake of
desire until she sheds, to
embrace chaos and open sarcophagus
lids, we must intone rhythmic
idioms of repetitive loss, let
inhabit us what hollows out
all that we hold close,

drinking from the well at
the world’s end, fire and
salt mark, without walls, in
echoing wails the boundaries of
where Sodom once was, its
city of forbidden flavours filling
us ever since with a

                         iv.

thirst our flesh can never
quench, a twitch our desires
never can still, unjust because
what we want no one
else does, the way eating
out a novice priest comes
to make shame dissolve like

a consecrated host on the
spoiled tongue, summoned by desire
to be undone, to evaporate
the way faith always does
misplaced, I am persuaded this
instant to recommend Carol Ann
Duffy’s “Warming Her Pearls,” a

favoured poem of mine, and
relevant, not only because I
seek to gift you jewels
of milky stone, but because
you suffer at present a
desire you do not suffer
alone— The way silenced desire

forms its own voice inside
an ignored head, creates a
vehicle for hatred from neglect,
love grows over abuse like
a cataract, inking verse sealed
with my spit to carry
forward with it the force

of my will, such is
the power of the puzzle,
fingers narrow to rim the
winking apertures of blind urns,
ashen porn scatters forth its
blackened orchids of wept immediacies,
wrinkled miracle curls of cigarette

                         v.

burns this warmth turns to
hurt to inform, to submerge
in subliminal currents this itch
of spark crackling up in
the gnostic momentum of my
planet’s downfall, soft fury of
velvet, aromantic aromatics of rot,

Sumatran Black as the bitterness
of cold coffee licked off
dead lips, moonlit acolytes unable
to forgive, inarticulate initiates of
my bullet-proven bullshit oracle whole,
wound kisses from puckered lips,
puncture with punches of pluck

and grit, prince of a
dead race, call my love
a lie, down the narrow
alley of a bone from
the throat of which fluted
desire sucked all marrow, going
down slowly never knowing if

there would ever be a
tomorrow, leave me to your
tremble, symptoms are a language,
stratigraphic layers of loss, moss
over memory with sage green
cartonnage, warm wounds with kisses,
fall into death like Narcissus

into his own image, Antinous
into the Nile, beatific, apotheosized,
visited by ecstatic experiences, the
way Coronavirus is just an
anagram of Carnivorous, contagious as
it was, this taste of
my lips for your flesh.