~*~
Why Hast Thou?
Waking, I do not wake.
Here is the fact of it.
My arms ail, unaided.
Your cold is calculated.
Damsel at the door of Father’s house,
my Israel bears No Pity.
Evil hour, a Pentateuch of woe,
five stones you throw
at my shadow, simpering.
And yet, beneath the shyberry tree
your red thorn pricks immodestly.
Naked, I know thee,
fully. It is a true blue terror,
absolute and emptier than the dress
I have undressed from. I swig
your vinegar, maul the vulgar
throbbing I will come
to underrate. A note on your scissors
reads: Haunted. Do not use.
But I do.
I amputate them all.
The laurels, the palms.
The wines I drank, the Christs
of bronze and iron I enticed.
I am the axemaid. I hack and I hew.
The wound— I assume—
will be worse than the scar.
By far.
But bleeding, I bleed freely.
It is early, a moist Friday morning.
You leave, so cavalier and quick.
I nearly die of it.
~*~
Within
In my fringe and in my fastenings.
In and out of my fringe and fastenings.
In your vastly arms and staving off lusts
In vain. In those early rainy days when your inveiglement
Bathed me in kisses.
And those pink, pleated instances
When I posed myself in a stance that feigned disgrace.
Just in case.
In sincerity, demand and denial.
In God’s damn hands. Or the Devil’s.
The lived-in look of love.
In lieu of
Or in unison.
Or the deep end one dives in
When the end vies to justify both means
And margin. An unintended meaning
Barging into the sentence
of us. The incense-scented
Resins of an inlay
Veneer. In layman’s
Terms: This box right here.
Wherein lie my tears.
In quite and quiet circumstance.
Insofar as.
And, in as far in as you can go.
In that wet, whispered oh
And in the throwdown.
In a bed with a duck down throw
Quilt, a billowing of pillows.
In times such as these. Or those
Other times, when, in a doorway or behind its door
Or from behind, or on the floor
I lured you to.
In situ.
Or in absentia.
Or my insomnia,
Which, in all good conscience,
I cannot pin on you. The iridescent
Mess of in memoriam-ness.
In media res.
Instead: this idiot
Of idioms,
My requisite investment
In rhymed, ripe couplets.
(Enough with.) In fierce, infrequent bursts.
Inert or inserting.
In the first place.
In the worst way.
A damson in distress.
In a tree. In tristesse.
Indigo-hued.
The drupaceous fruit
Of my ineptitude. Your plumb
And upright insistence.
And my up-ending.
And my ending up
As a taste on your inevitable tongue.
The savory your mouth’s been in search of.
~*~
Aphrodesia
She of the lovesick,
She of the mandrake,
She of the woodcock,
She of the plover’s egg,
She of the lamprey,
She of the marjoram,
She of the countercharm,
She of the doldrum,
She of the aniseed,
She of the philter,
She of the orchids,
Sword-leaved and ladyslipper,
She of the heart-sleeve,
She of the undergloom,
She of the foxglove,
She of the thunderstones,
She of the motherland,
She of the moth,
She of the brothel,
She of the broth,
She of the thumbscrew,
She of the shrieking,
She of the hedge sparrow,
She of the fucking,
She of the snakeroot,
She of the cuttlefish,
She of the passionfruit,
She of the dervish,
She of the loosestrife,
She of the penis,
She of the afterlife:
Venus.
~*~
I am condemned to a version of my death*
It’s the terror I dine with, drive with, deny with.
The night’s deep middle, which is made for tears.
My hummingbird heart, the black ribbons I wear.
The chill of the gunsmith’s bluing salt bath.
And the metamorphic rock of my monolith.
It’s the birth of a singular grief called numb.
The murder of the birds and the thumbprint moon.
It’s grape thorn, fig thistle, olive berry, drupe.
Or false fruit. Or fresh frost. Or fetish. Or fashion.
Or the roof I surely would jump from.
It’s my granite, noctambular wandering around.
My misstep, my tempest, my queerly tempting quiverlip.
It’s the nine times I did, and the tenth that I didn’t.
It’s how the money changed its hands.
Or the moneychanger’s ampersands.
It’s also & likewise, besides & in addition.
It’s a frantic confession of panicky bastardy.
Or who I might be, both fool and hardy.
Or the quicksand-fix God that implemented.
Or the up-end of a good intention,
Ever a road to Hell. It’s always most
And never the lesser. It’s better this way,
I’m thinking. It’s the fearless heart I’ve feigned,
And her breaking. The ache of unsayable woe.
Or the knock on the door that means no.
Or the last time I see you. Or the first time I don’t.
(*this is the first in a series of poems called “The (deva)Stations of the Cross.” The tilte of each section tweaks the canonical version. The first actual station is “Jesus is Condemned to Death.”
~*~
Drill Press
Drill. Press.
She undresses.
She’s dibbled, split,
And gimlet-ed.
Rubbed red
Where said flesh
First was pinker.
A boring of fresh holes
Occurs. Not boring,
They concur.
She purrs and awes
His awl. All in all,
His auger’s quite
The implement (why,
Therefore, she limps a bit).
Tight fit. But
The roughneck gets right
To it. He’s dexterous
Astride her, and fluid.
Hexed shank,
His enchantments
Demand to be greased.
Fuck, yeah she agrees
To his reaming spree.
Her distress is convex.
His worm gear is torqued.
Huntsman: what javelin?
Machinist: whose swarf?
It’s a one-way screw
That he threads into her slot.
My God. He grips her
Precisely where her vice is.
She’s left but to moan on his
Devices. And his spindle
More than suffices.
~*~