When I'm excited, I turn young
and cry wine blood, in my tongue
bitter and slick and arousing
like the bleak colors of international
pain. I wear a necklace forged from
the calves of men from the moon,
I invite moaning thunders in my room.
I am perplexed. Why did I waste my
youth pretending I was old. Why didn't
I offer my body as springboard for parasites
to court the song of decadence from
between the slippery crotch of mountains.
I am now with age and yet without age.
I've been seen. Touched, too, and combed
and stretched and smote to coarse powder
now riding the wind where we go off violining
down the perilous slopes of people's
roofs. Time, take me back to a place I
didn't know was waiting for me.
Time, take me back to fix the failure
of language. I know. The past is a cemetery
of spasms. I know. The present is a heartburn
in progress. I know. Only in the future
can I see the work being done.

My boy
stick your tongue out
even if no winters
could ever arrive here.
Don't wait.
Come and go
As you please.
Earth is a hotel room
of strangers
rehearsing abandon
with ease.
When you get cold,
bet on me.
I can lay
my body down.
Fitting to yours
like crooked teeth
biting the ridges
of a saw.
I promise, it's
a soft bite.
Trust, that's all.
And I'll try my best.
But please.
Don't ever ask,
Are We Here

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.