(explicit)

**** my soul
        with poetry
           scream out my gracious name
             slay me with words
               that peel my layers
                and simultaneously
                                   drive me
                                           insane

finger me slowly, hotly
with just the right rhythm and rhyme
    push me past my
                 tender limits
                       into tongues of syntax,
                                                      sublime

a­lliterate my senses
   (in swift stac
                    c-at
                           o)
until my mind is but blank verse
    mess up my stressed
              and unstressed syllables
in unsung language, versed

I will speak to you in vowels
(the only sound
       I will be able to make)
as you stroke
   my iambic pentameter
             in the heat of frothed-up
                                                     ache

we are this heroic couplet, you see
        even if the meaning seems veiled
           no need for simile or metaphor
               as I feel your chest rise
                              in deep inhale

we are a natural paradox
       so many ironies abound
         discordant harmony
is our synaesthesia
     in visible darkness found

and I love this delicious enjambment
as your aura invisibly slips
                               into mine
our lines have no beginning,
                                 no end
    as we undo
          the boundaries
                      of time

Enter my stasis: hands groping in the dark
Yet cannot grab nor call for help. My fingers

Are meshed by frozen teardrops, my feet do not
Trust the floor below. Such kingdom I have made,

Enough to put their walls to shame. I have everything:
Between the fortune and the fame, I stand. All the world’s

Marvels come here and do not come out. You can check out
Any time you like, a song once said, but you can never leave.

I have everything, but the single thought of you—of not
Having you—has turned them all to ice. I am married

To this arctic cathedral. I sleep beneath the sheets of satin
As cold as the hollow infinite you placed on your lips.

I do not wish to stay, but the wrist is shy at the welcome
Of a blade. At times, I would sling a sentence to the sky

To shake off sunlight from a cloud. But you would come
And tempt me with December’s air. Oh, my sweet despair,

You are the eye in the ice, the sharp drip of a frozen spike
That hangs from my ceiling. Darling, I wish to be unthawed.

A frozen kiss had sealed my lips. I cannot holler for help,
For in the land of the blind, the silent man is lonely.

The rain, an aphrodisiac,
droplets magnifying beauty,
moisture igniting lust,
but unable to quench the flame.