Vox Nihili

                         i.

W     e travel packed in the bodies of mummies
     with all the coruscating splendour of a jewel
in the abyss, pissing away in hell’s ditches
eternities of riches greed has yet to vanquish,

                         ii.

chill clinging to the still air, unwilling to
disappear, this despair derails, unravels gossamer trails over
which gossip travels for whispers to track this
devil who does not deal in the currency

                         iii.

of souls, he buys me by lying about
liking me, taking my love as though either
of us were ever more than whores, in
mouths hide opened sores read in the book

                         iv.

of his hands, each crease a wrinkle of
text, the shattering climax that this impossible illusion
cannot be sustained, combustible, combusts, not in the
way we think, that what celluloid does is

                         v.

constrain the depraved demon our desire raised, the
names it makes this fame feeds, this fame
takes, taints fates misshapen zodiacs of maniac eyes
augur, heaping collapse on the distance between us

                         vi.

two, both hewn from ruin, coming out of
the woodwork in wildfire season dusted with embers,
we learn never to trust what only our
bodies remember after echoing the same flaming encounter,

                         vii.

we have now collapsed together a mouth closing
to swallow all sound, a slit mind like
stained glass cut to fit blood’s lust for
lies lived through the silt split light gives

                         viii.

when splintered just right, it spills luminescence ludicrous
and lewd as this verse my pen drips,
carried through the culture as a buried voice
longs for lungs, as an annoyed poet quips

                         ix.

with barbarian brutishness, rejoinders intended to destroy confidence
in oneself my assuredness in my own diminishes,
extinguishing by degrees each initiate, this isn’t ritual,
this is a wordless performance of sensational confrontation,

                         x.

a contour of the myth, an anthropology of
our legend, polemic poring forth pornographic poetics, turning
on this axis of melodramatic romance, suffering for
how much I love him, a condemned man

                         xi.

my love imprisons in the choreography of these
daily lies, where everything I want him to
be everyone else isn’t, and so my mind
divides that the way I feel I always

                         xii.

hide denies, yet it never dies, in fact,
desire multiplies what scandal intensifies a whore performing
previews of pure love, a conjunctive moniker linking
our brands together, perversifier and face-painter, I’m ready

                         xiii.

for my close-up and I don’t mean a
camera shot, either, here where cast aspersions hire
for possessions where you get to break shit,
hearts and records, best understood through my fires.