Swallowing Bullets

                         i.

G  rief is the god of
  long journeys, whose heat heaves,
breathes ashes onto flesh across
which tears bleed, leads you
through the garden you gave
up when it became too
difficult to cultivate, carries you
the way of pain, via

                         ii.

your Ikea knock-up mock-up of
a Via Dolorosa, to this
gate where some fate awaits,
a specimen pinned-down as though
undoing a crucifixion at a
crossroads, wasting no time, waiting
for no one, always coming,
contemplating another day or the

                         iii.

grave, so serious, they say,
for the victim of one’s
own doubt to pontificate about
being prey, to complain about
the rate at which ache
exchanges for healing its radiating
wake, takes for granted a
prince in lunar armour my

                         iv.

chariot awaits, archetypal face read
as dread on arrival to
make you deal with what
you’ve been dealt, a lie
that grows in shadow knives
through to the silent marrow
of this boned moment’s hollow
echo struggling in your soft

                         v.

grasp, you who insist on
keeping my kisses feeling this
meaningless, a voice from the
rubble, a kindred scoundrel, mumbling,
touching me like sunset on
granite, water thirsting for erosion
going at it knowing it
won’t get it, my hands

                         vi.

keep my thoughts busy, while
my mind multiplies mirages of
this body distance and time
hides from my prying eyes,
destroyed by iconoclasts, questions asked
the wrong way annoy Lucifer,
who anoints shadows with light,
drying off the bleeding of

                         vii.

a broken heart to the
metronome of a dripping faucet,
not yet dying of love’s
loss, legs both spread apart
as though welcoming a lover
whose bitten lips bitterness has
riven to spit a red
that was almost black, the

                         viii.

beast in your voices tells
dialect stories about versions of
me you’ve never met, see
here how he always responds
very obliquely to my advances,
cashes in on my checking
him out, palm-feeds me doubt,
when fear is replaced by

                         ix.

need drumming with cymbalism, a
voice in loud water riding
a sine wave to a
crash that never came surfaces,
consumes with flames its echo
of grief left unnamed, my
hands keep my thoughts busy,
while my mind multiplies mirages

                         x.

of this body distance and
time hides from my prying
eyes, in the third Carolingian
age, sucking the pulp out
of the page, fear and
memory follow the same veiny
geometry as heartache, trace the
same genealogy as pain, make

                         xi.

no mistake making no escape,
fail to erase the same
way love does, once named,
such is the curse of
performing a rehearsed trajectory, of
nursing a tragedy before its
birth, transferred hurt always transcends
any attempt at bettering the

                         xii.

bitterness of its witty source,
the eternal heart whose pores
are wounds, whose mouths are
sores, as though at the
hand of knives of blue
fire, weeping as though carried
by some blue denial, red
flame bleeds from worried stones,

                         xiii.

mourns having foregone having to
worry about another century of
silent survival, marks the mileage
in scars of scorch, ashes-out
cuneiform as a matter of
course, goes on going, knows,
when cataloguing the choreography of
our erotic odyssey, weakness is

                         xiv.

just a decorative detail, so
obvious that someone so obsequious
as this must be at
once subservient and observant, impossible
to fuck with or dismiss,
manifests emptiness, emits darkness which
guts this lanternfish, spittle in
blood dialect, tonguing wounds of

                         xv.

rubies wept, swallowing bullets flowering
in and out of bed,
you make love feel like
punishment for getting something I
never wanted, and can only
get rid of now by
giving every critic of my
lossy lyrics a hi-res kiss.