A funeral pyre.
Tonight our bodies on the bed.
I will never tire.
Mapping what isn't being said.

To be shaped by love, know first
How it destroys.

To know how it destroys,
Recognize love as a physical act.

To recognize love as a physical act,
Consider the body's limits and transgressions.

To consider the body's limits and transgressions,
Probe it for signs of anomaly. Of creatureness.

To probe, start by using your fingers to poke
Regions where illusions are cooked, like the groin.

To locate the groin, slither your hand from mouth
all the way down until you feel dirt.

Once there, dig. The mush will feel soft and wet and grisly
And delicious. Like exile. Feel around for a thin chord.

Once you get your hand on this chord, pull. Pull very hard.
Like you're born to unstitch. Or turn off a light. Or flush.

Your body will split open like a thick *** of paper bills
fresh off a rubber band hug. And your remains

Will flutter like a flag. Notice the bone marrow in bloodspeck
jangling in wind chime language to announce an arrival.

Your arrival, maybe. But what is left other than your body splayed
open? Notice your meatshop bargain delicacy. Limbs as vivid

As a freehand sketch artist's depiction of alive. It sounds so beautiful,
Love. Especially in Springtime.

In the days leading up to my ******,
I saw a message in the form of a tattoo
On the back of this guy I was having *** with.
It was a picture of a skiff too far from its port
Yet not close enough to know for sure whether it was
arriving or beginning to drift away from dock.
When you're having ***, everything is symbolic (?),
so I took this picture as a demonstration, delivered
by kismet or something like it, of the way I seem
to dither between mooring myself to a pair of eyes that see me,
—flesh, not for what it is but for what it could be: sweating animal.
Dangerous animal. Animal to be forgiven—
and escaping, a spray of foam there on the crest
trailing its ebbs and bobs, dispersing
as it ripples and fades flat. I don't know anymore.
Who I am What to be What to like How to dress
Whom to befriend When to use whom What prayers are for If they work.
Suddenly I stop the *** and ask this guy, Why the tattoo?
He turns around, kisses me, fondles me, cups my breast,
almost squeezing, turns me around, penetrates me,
and lets out a moan so sinister it was
nearly love.

Lying here, my back pressing
On your back while sleeping
And breathing. When we sleep
We lose control of the rules.
The body drives itself: submit,
It says. But are you there? Maybe.
And where is that exactly?
I am no expert on place.
Though I know I feel
less of me when you are there but
Not there. That's okay. Here but not
Here, that's where I am, too.  
More often than you.
And more like this,
Me waking before you, will come.
All that needs to be done is wait.
And wait is the only unbreakable promise.
To you, I promise to be whole even when
I'm living in the interim between here and unhere.
Even if I'm a resting carcass penduluming
From one end to the other. This is why
I go away, you see. I wish the answer was simpler.
I want it to be simpler because I can't
Lose you again.
Nothing compares to the percussive
heart assault of descending into
your mind. Or falling into you.
Your chest
Rising then falling,
the print of ribs underneath like gift-wrapped cages.
That's really what falling is.
Together
even in the lapse of alive.
In this Vulcan moonshade, all I can do is
adore you while I wait for sleep to come.

I can’t sleep. It’s 4 in the morning.
I’m thinking of disappearing.
Not running away, but actually
wishing to be gone. As in the body
has had enough replenish and wants
instead to be a vacuum.
As in the body is
the only place that
has no interim between
detonating a bomb
and the residue falling
like featherweight acid hail.
Looping forever like
a memory without suffer.
No absurd pain
of shattered bones, no healing
required.
Do I want this?
I want sleep. It’s 5.

The truth is, my love does not, after all,
await me in a different world. All those nights

looking up didn't pull him closer, as there was
never anything to pull to begin with. The planets

wheeled along their given orbits, tethered snugly;
bodies unwilling to cut the grapnel, a beautiful order

and quiet dance. Stars kept exploding as I waited
for me to be beautiful. Stars hot and menacing.

Each movement a wager to rupture the fabric of time.
Maybe it is not that I'm made of stars, as the saying goes.

Perhaps nothing relates me to it.
Sadly.

But its chaos is my forward.
Its tails are my wishes.

Starburn plasma, galactic spasm,
why does starlight show me boys I can't fathom.

The neighbour is looking through his telescope
now, unbuttoning his shirt, snatching moments

to take swigs of cola. I wish I could be him.
Live in his mouth. Take his voice. And stay

quiet forever, or as long as it takes for stars
to swallow nearby stars. If that's even how it works.

I’m sorry if love didn’t work out.
There are other forms of worship.
Or maybe that’s why it didn’t work out.
You made him into a jezebel.
He wanted to be skin, bone, breath,
touch, sinew, sweat. Not God.
So now you’re stuck with an imprint
of a person you barely gave time
to settle in — how could that happen?
Residue even when he walked on air.
Sourmouth lingering there when you
close your eyes. Every letter of his name
spelling a fragrance that betrays pure-grade
everlasting peace. Your heart choking on its
own spit. His ***** inside you hardening
into a lair for a nightmare still brewing.
I’m sorry if I never held you the way
you wanted to be held. Sorry for starting
aerobic sessions of always wanting
more. For expecting you knew how to repair
a body addicted to electric shocks.
I told you. Didn’t I? I promised ruin; you pushed
unblinking. I wanted someone to invent
a new period of day between morning
and nighttime, but the only thing we ever
came up with was dimness.