For Taylor
‘Rancid night of the skin when you passed over me,
Not knowing this disguise held all my sanctity,
This rouge drowned in the glacial waters of perfidy.’
–Mallarmé, The Clown Chastised
Music. Cantankerous. All of the erotica left in a past life. This midnight knows my name, sure. This cigarette has kissed my lips, this old harlot down this old dirt road, this gravel beneath my tires. What does it matter? Music. Music along the insides. Her soft pants smoking brisket, cherry wood and cedar, sifting through the sands of my hair and doing her best buddha. God is watching. She winks like a diamond ring. A piano plays a pink horizon on her lips. Soft faces. Androgyny. Who’s coming. Who’s going. She’s prying at my ribs, trying to get a look inside my heart, whether it beats for her or the act. So far so good. Pulling triggers- tapping keys between breaths, sonatas played on pink clitori. This is irreverent. People like this. Between the hour I’ve become a virtuoso. Somewhere the little nerves are dancing. I’m awake. I’m tired. Our shuttered eyes turn off these cities one by one.
And as i quit this ashen ghost
And propose a latté to the rain
[the streetlights looking somewhat
naked in the sunshine-] i say,
If a figure were
To strike a match within your heart
I would have this heads up overnighted
Over the great valleys of my sorrows surge
Rather than face this silence rapping at my door.
But deary
[hlf jkngly]
Our heads weren’t alway so bald
[as we massage our thinking wrinkles, dulling each crease]
live wires course rubber coats our outside a tempest hides between handshakes peeps like a cupidon. vernal rain erupts tails the avenue slithers down our lashes beads- scorches sought out lips. lovers walk the streets blur between glances we lend and i see them offer suffer and i people myself to them. cars hurry along the avenue the storm drain- cigarette butts in cheap lingerie silk and mire breast stroking through the streets. we approach this puddle you take my hand as if below this heedless surface you’ve watched us drown
fortunes fall like petals she loves me she loves me not a bobby pin pulled erupts a shih tzu spell we laugh atlas couldn't bear to hold your bangs like crash course metaphysics you make me doubt the ascension whether poetry is written in mascara or ink
i stop
your eyes draw me into this sentence
you’re as silent as you are beautiful and that is art
Spearmint of a lover still on your lips. Radio. Fine. We aren’t chatty anymore. We used to be chatty. It's merely a touch. A certain look. Where's the apple? Are we sinning? Your cunt dribbles morning dew. It wheels between my lips and tastes sweetly on my tongue. Its viscous chants. Like cider. You made small talk before. Only now do I listen. Morphine. Lily lips. I’m too high to cum, although you ride vigorously, as if trying to buy me through the kiosk of your cunt. I see the orchids in your eyes, the way they swell and quiver. I feel you tighten your hips. I cradle your throat like a child. Rapture? Not this time. It's something sinister. Something that destroys us both. We revel in its frail epoxy. Laze within its cuffs. Metal chains hooked on heavy boards, veiled in dead muppets.
And now the sheath of night
Derails the avenues of slumber
To pretty thoughts of kisses
Analytical, Psychosexual
Dripping with smooth malice
Like water based- blah
Those masochistic nights
One can't wash away
with dove
or dial
The scent of spring
Weaves a web between
Those lips, every word
Becoming gossamer
With a sharp exhale. that boy-
Caesar’s dagger
Unsheathed, undrawn, caged
Within his boxer shorts, cucked
And crimson coiled im laughing
While I soothe your skin with sharp
Knives, senators swell my fingertips
Leave the carcass for the pigeons
And the runts, as Rome
Cannot run this brute out of his own bed-
Though it can send you
Back across town into the arms
Of that boy, inquiring about the florid
Handprint across your ass-
Your lips still tasting of disregarded life
Still regarding my mild simper
At the whole ordeal
And the earth has stopped chatting. Quiet now. Only the polite roar of an airplane. Frilled orchids. Geraniums. And flesh. Damp. Quivering. Pavement prairie rising, swooping, steaming in light rain. Visions. Percocet. These memories running through my fingers like sand. You decide to mumble this affair. Sure. We were trees with tangled roots. You grab at the base of my cock and spit, jerking up and down- playing a trombone. I’m hard as granite. You lead me like an oxen into the hearth of your cunt. We disappear.
God cut a slit
In your soul
Baptists say
It's the gateway to hell
[Im cnvincd] its some vague opposite
some blackstar defiling my rigid , ,
I just cant get enough
Of your sick puppy pants
The fever of it all
The endless river of sweat
And tar
Christ shields his eyes
[fate] couldnt f.ck better
Love. Sure. If it was. It used to be. Buds of passion blooming to amorous lilies. Innocent. Concise. If eternity could exist within a single hour, I would have said my vows. Instead I woke the next morning, your head erected on my chest. Bed head. Morning breath. Stolid features glistened white, marble veined and sorrowful, knowing we’d spoiled our fun too soon. There was one road beyond the river. One sharp ascent from ruin. It brought us to your mother's grave. Sweating through my wedding clothes. Ruffled remnants of a suit. Flaccid tie.
And I still hear it
The way she said it
With her girlish rasp
Like she’d say it over and over again
Each June as we visited together
Passing through the iron fences
The obsidian arches
Sweeping over dunes of gray stone
And fabric flowers
Growing old in our imagined eternity
Sprawled Beneath the summer sun
Its warmth over Amish fields
Tilled by oxen, great bearded men
Like statues
A brave water tower the only mention
Of her hometown-
And beneath it all
We’d find some sort of life
Within this ruin
It all seems so silly now-
[ahem] as she said
‘You dressed so nicely to meet my mom’`
The words falling into her lap
Like great drops of rain
And I still regret
The way her heart resounded through the daisies.
