Whether tender or ravenous,
each hand that touches my skin
blackens at the bone.

No sorting by intent.
No absolution for saints.
My body weeps
a sweet, corroding brine.

little rib, sweet Eve
his favorite bone
You exist
you become

I am source labels
a straggle of cables
my body is code
in phosphor glow

a programming stream
his boyish daydream
Eve’s essence
spectral presence

mathematical syntax
a file with an index
pressed into RAM
like lips to glass

run//proof: corrupt
> loop. loop. loop
> fail to reboot

decant me
spill the vintage of my veins
into every open mouth

dissect my body
offer a wet sliver to every stranger
who thought me ornamental

give it all away

but whisper
in the hush between incisions
that I am yours

yours to unmake
to savor like nectar from a flower
to flay with reverence

and leave
an elegy of viscera
no one wants to keep

never closer the whole rest of our lives
than that night we caught celestial lies
flaming comets cryptic and precise
appear in sequence through the sky

we made a satellite our home
and named the galaxies we formed
with unharnessed disposition you led me on a space walk
turned around, let go of my hand
closed the sputnik hatch without looking back

the Pleiades gleam jewel-wise against the softest black
extending a thin thread for me to grab
glittering as I float in the vastness unafraid
of what I never saw on Earth

stranded forever in space
like a Russian cosmonaut of the canine kind
paralleling a bark and a sigh on our last orbital sunrise

I died once
then twice
gracefully, painlessly
willingly, endlessly
I died
night after night
yet always woke up alive

As in the moon is the endless night
And in the sun the infinite flame
The morning glories in a birdsong
And all the shadows in hell
So in my prayer is the plead
To the poet and the devil
“Make a rhyme! Set a fire!”
As in my blood flows ferrous magic
And in my howl demonic rage

born in bundles
under hooks and clamps
in the damp dark
in the hard lack

what agony distorts
the music in the hall
echoes of roars
laments through the walls

riding to the abattoir
with moist protruding eyes
a fox and a baby ox
wearing our finest coats