No Kickin’ Those Ol’ Boot-Lickin’ Blues

                             i.

N   o history swallowed your identity whole,
   trust, mister, this abyss of your
absence is astonishing, though I must
admit I’m just happy to constellate
in your orbit, loving you so
hard (it’s almost a grand opening),
craving a body that cannot be
conquered only destroyed, all our monsters
are our moral self-auditors, between satire
and sympathy until the window is

                             ii.

a mirror, your treasury’s inventory says
I’m an exorcised demon vitrified in
glass, just because you aren’t selling
it doesn’t mean we can’t pay
you for it, tonguing syrup through
lace, philosophies of oblivion and decadence
frustrating and enervating as the snaking
savagery of our sexuality’s baked-in tension,
flush-faced and fresh, basking tension senses
an in-between place, tension between the

                             iii.

power of speech and the danger
of the ritual space, neutralize the
threat of living hieroglyphs by rendering
them incomplete, the energy it takes
to deal with me precludes relationships,
to be sure, caricature as I
am of every expectation, brilliant clown,
best kept at a distance if
not around, it should not take
so long to be this admired,

                             iv.

most often read in isolation, tomb
of a venomous magician, public language
pubic enough to make a censor
blush, a residue of Puritanism, a
marsh of reads flowering into theological
density, a high-drama cosmic spell, ritual
grammar, stone is the ink of
the gods and the sacred text
is published in relief, not so
much sweat as bled, now we’re

                             v.

seed spilled at their feet, our
whine is the need we dare
not speak, no kickin’ those ol’
boot-lickin’ blues, my sweet, only begging
the fathers we flee for release
from this legacy, from slavery to
every desire we see in fantasies
we can’t read, only believe, no
kickin’ those ol’ boot-lickin’ blues, only
agony eager to be so consumed.