I will refer to them by names and by allusions.
I call them back from the underworld, demand they speak
and dredge up all their bitter deaths and betrayals and joys
and their sorrows most of all.

I will make myself an icon, standing on their shoulders
a thousand books on my back that show my terrible vast strength
(leviathan, goliath, titan)
my trojan horses bring thoughts in different faces, smuggling cargo
with the help of dead Greeks.

Watch me fly, please, picking up feet and hurtling through the air, dead as ghosts and old-time rock'n'roll and picking up speed as I hurtle, whatever wings you see are nothing but bright gossamer in a funeral shroud pressed tight over my face by wind. I will unfold them, I know I can, the ache for it bends my ribs and crushes my lungs with the space it takes inside me. Until I do I dance as the dead around me do, a long quiet whistling plunge.

let me write on joy for once
and not on this pouring, dripping mourning, no, because today
a dawn's sad weeping means nothing to me
but birth and beauty and beginning and the unalterable unarguable blueness
of the sky
for today at least.

let me go mad and expose it all for you, please
stripping away pretense
or waving it teasingly or
grinding myself against it savage and urgent.

My bones are full of tar, and I know this is true because I feel it
when I move especially

I hear it when I shower, when it gurgles inside me
and when I move to touch another it bubbles and recoils
and when another touches my skin it screams
to keep me safe
and to keep me from giving it to them as well.

It thrives and lurches when I move into or onto you, between you or through one of your body's spaces and
when I slip, with full permission
(but still feeling of guile)
into you is when I hear it most of all
and its happiness screams in my head until I can think of nothing but *****

my bones are full of black tar

It's dead cold at night
the bottle gleams, electric
a cold drink is best.

It's quite dark in here
just a cherry, skunky sweet
a thick fog is best.

Nothing moves these days
but the rhythm, our wet flesh
and nothing is best.

When I was a child I thought that songs on the radio
were unique, played some few times before the world moved on to something
more new more unique more now more hip more more,
each song a brief event that flashed by and melded with the time before
and the times after
before growing older, fading like friends or daylight
but when I grew up I realized that songs dance
like the dead, in our streets, forever

If it may ease the strain I welcome it
gladly and with open arms but
I really doubt it will come so easy
and so I will make the erors myself.