Count On Me to Be (All the Things You Don’t Want to Seem)
i.
Prince of a dead race,
you call my love a
lie best understood through my
fires, disasters which trigger the
rhythms of my instincts, excoriating
ii.
and excruciating, the wrought and
the ruined Google: “how to
get news from the dead…”
a victim of an identity
broken in the home of
iii.
these bodies we build ourselves,
with all the intimacy of
washing your lover’s feet before
his crucifixion, a man who
moves as shadow does upon
iv.
the sand, rosary as a
tourniquet taut in left hand,
strangle the two things I
hate most about myself: being
Canadian and being gay, both
v.
unfulfilling as a life-long day
awaiting escape from the hell
they convey, this prison it
is not a closet, it
is a cage, not built
vi.
to house treasure, but buried
to earth a power, a
wordless performance of sensational confrontation
now that we’ve novitiated, let’s
make our vows and take
vii.
the veil, writers who handle
truths that can’t be held
by death, the way my
skull makes more material this
mercurial temperament I’m known for,
viii.
a whore performing previews of
pure love, a conjunctive moniker
linking our brands together, perversifier
and face-painter, I’m ready for
my close-up and I don’t
ix.
mean a camera shot, either,
the way water’s really into
wine, people hate the unrelatable,
they’ll blind the public eye
just to find a better
x.
lie to hide behind, count
on me to be (all
the things you don’t want
to seem), symphonic textures with
cinematic dynamics glamorous and tumultuous,
xi.
celluloid and latex, media, martyrdom,
and marginality count on me
to be (all the things
you don’t want to seem),
synonym isn’t definition, something like
xii.
“The Wretched Conclave” might also
strike the right tone—a
secret gathering of souls whose
desires and despairs conspire to
shape a world of night.
