INTO THIS VOID, SOMETHING NEWBORN
for the serpents and the rocks

twelve days like twelve days like twelve rereadings of missed messages like twelve disciplined disciples like twelve darkly rent hearts of my heart limb from limb twelfth hour awaking bereft to recall the half-moon lowing in silver-stringed scything sorrow twelv

and

i know that sonofagod spent         forty days and forty nights deserted with nothing / but a ballsack and                   attendant demon          already our hair grows lank with disuse / throw me maiden         monkey wrench / how am I so sick spit for your salving / if grandiose is this / pour me a witness

and

the only way out / is through / barbed-wire wood / cauterising each / strayward limb / baba yaga keeps the fire lit in her perimeter / ringed by sentinel skulls / I, too / we mastered the serpent / crushing it underfoot / but look again / stand upon your own tail / one most vital thing you know / seeping out a stillborn puddle / on which you can admire / the ungrateful haughty moon / a faint giggle

and

will these ants etch themselves into / picking slivers off / my bones? / every word is / en capsuled embodiment / meaning flaying words off of flesh / sweat saturated into skin / every second I miss / but a drop off unmarked back / the trickle / carves its way through / rock / unthinking          I, too

and

even now / the void an unmistakeable chasm / not mistake / but hitch / a skip between breaths of a flat pebble making quick work of a body / still water / coming back for seconds / yes / I heard it / yes / everything / a petition paean psalm sent to hurl champagne at the gods / then wend its way back / to echo / through this / not slit but cavern

and

still obsessed / with urination / in public / still obsessed with / self as corpseflesh / still touching / each and every toe on the tip / to make sure I am here / as you are / me of my me / mnemosyne my constant lilting motherfather chrrrpy in the back of my mind / permanent cardiac stress test in the forefront / always the tiny palmed wide-eyed lurking littleteethed watching waiting / and another another
          another day / by my side

                               I, too

BUTTERED GREED LIMPING IN THE SHUTTER OF HURT

I         have many words for your body but        no name for you.

          the hallowed dust-stone, I covet             even if          I should take lashes   for it    if seal is broken do not eat          freshness as imperative               fleshness as interrogative  these my pale wrecked hands apologising           again we are fruiting these poisons         from our nailbeds        the final stake          in the casket of glory          a four-inch fruit blade embedded in our heads      we can live with                     only intervene          when the rust starts

a warning that you somehow heard        and refused to break open   with your fingers:     this is not what you came here for

sit here                    with me         every insectile wing dropping          from our soft gape   like a fine-toothed comb     tell me who you are  because still I know exactly which reasons          you bring me each sunside report of polished pewter          weather         squared away beneath my ribs     a collector’s assortment of    tempered hollow bones     every dusty museum exhibit has            a split shriek taxidermied bird of paradise staring me glassy in the eye like so many hallowed petitions borne         on the wings of incense

do you? take each layer lying                 prone            away from the gauze-wrapped burn      every individual bandage a menace        

a cyclist’s quick-trigger whim        spinning down the smooth road of my hunger              hesitant sunlight      worries at my cards  cancelling all the headlines          and spring break besides         in a seasonless mirage

it’s no thing   between two gods   just               canting rhythm          between shards      
tugging childlike on boating rope  making no meaning but urgent

how do you   disappoint yourself  sit with me here       in the lightless lunacy  take up my empty mercy seat       on its offer   and wag heaven’s finger    saying

don’t you dare cuss me out

it can get worse                 it can always get worse

in the end      I spill you      on a singer    sewing machine misstepped              thread each thrumming letter of your full name needlepoint    I pick at old wounds with fresh anxiety              I repeat your every syllable to me like it helps              it helps

a lowing sigh at my baby’s behest nothing’s more metal          than this        the tabernacle is      a solid excision                  I cannot approach    a poorly bishop        escaping          through the diagonals        having lost    the plot

in the far end garden of evisceration        the padi poultry           bellies up      spawn-kicking          procuring new                   desecrations I wanted        to press my face      into the baptismal font         like a health hazard

                               I wanted to    come closer to a single thing I knew

earning nothing                  learning some        

g*d made mud
g*d said to the mud, sit the fuck up.
mud sat up    looked around         and said

I don’t have anything          but the whisper of a broken crossroad offering    in the pleading streetlight   no sense          other than murdered                                         I am putting off listening to the mixtape           for just a little while

DID I KILL MY SHISO / IS MY ROSEMARY ALIVE
(giving thanks to Joy for the title)

my labdanum laudanum sternum
somewhere between opiate and ambergris
residing resin in a resigned chest

fetter me with a smokescreen of incense

gd fucking morning again            warm sarsaparilla memory
the lamb of god is all,         u won’t always
have me with u                 

but not me
two of wands steps instinctive     
          between
you and the fire.                           they told us   it would
hurt    and laughing openmouthed
we with all our teeth a toad fucked up
from the pointless questing

every day I am a word       and     that word is

I try not choking       myself
for hours at a time

why is the measure of love loss? because, Jeanette,
of the constant low-level cardiac arrest. look
at the bone-carved   exhaustion rolled in
bloodied tarp.                    at my dehydrated
summer and winded winter          my fingers desiccated       
in their wait
to tug curling           autumn

time is pervasive fiction but
at the tipping velvet point   all that you are                   a charred mark
falls               away 

does it cut it?
watching other people swallow?  
                                         if you’ve never 
pressed your open palm    to the singeing teppanyaki plate
don’t fucking approach                 if you’ve never
had a breastbone excised in an empty cathedral

place chicken breast side up on cutting board
with legs closest to you.               gently pull leg
away from breast area                 slice along the
line that runs along the breast      exposing
the flesh.       set down your knife grab
whole thigh in your hand    twist
away from the breast         (like you are turning a
doorknob)     popping the bone out of its socket

I’m so sick of prayers.        so sick of feasts,
apoplectic skeleton bare-jawed decrying
no more talking about feelings
when this is all over

every day a single set. one heart,
three syllables, skein
of sibilant fricatives  a stutter like clatter

water over wine
so it doesn’t kill
the succulents

isn’t all anyone’s afraid of
a real life miracle