pressing outwards against the naked walls of this room you don't dare dream of the continuity between my inside and this outside stretching further than any American can imagine this is an uncomfortable country I am dry and drying I am stiff and waiting I am born whole and ancient in the manner of things which wait, wait, in geological timescapes waiting for pressure and water and other things made to carve mountains out of sand.

The addicted always want to
be greater than the bodies we are
and isn't that virtuous?
Isn't that what saints are made of?

What is my name?
What is your name?
How are we going if you've already
assumed we share something,
an idea of colour
or motion or

If we're not of the world
where did it go?
Where did we go?

by being born we're given license
to occupy space.

may tomorrow
be softer.

may your days
be vivid.

may you forget,
so as not to choke on
memory.

The inside of your mouth is a universe, I imagine,
solemn, sacred, florid scarlet like statues of the Virgin Mary
crying resin tears. You'll have to profane your lovely mouth
to do it.

I did it four years ago.

The best way to do it is over an open flame for you'll
never forget the crisp caramel smell of all those Maillard reactions,
screams, stuff like that you only get with real old-fashioned fire.

Really, if you're going to do it, do it baroque, I want to see Louis XV up
in this silk velvet gold bitch.

Be sure to do it on a mountain somewhere rare and icy,
crystalline, even. Turn your fingers and ears black
to prove that you meaned it, you meant it, your whole
heart
is in it.

Remember, if you're going to do it you're doing
it to
me.

There's this story I like telling
about a girl who refused to give it up to me.
By 'it' I of course mean the soft wet
ridges of pussy I pursue from anecdote
to anecdote, no, this one only let me as
far as the interior of her mouth.
As good and vaginal as that is I was
resentful
and wanked off into her shining clean
beautiful hair as she slept.

Funny, I find no satisfaction
in imagining her face
when she woke alone with sticky stiff hair.
Like hairgel, if I was to use that
dreadful pop culture trope.

Now I feel the silt of this manmade pond
with my toes,
snap bugs off the surface of the water,
stand on one leg and eye off passers by.

It feels indecent, all this wild stagnant water.
If my feathers weren't waterproof
I'd be all gunked up,
defiled, even.
Every bit a worm-eating prey animal.

Once I was such a slab of man, furious
when I really got going
in the name of music. You'd see the
whites of my eyes and the
tendons in my neck and the
sweat bubble to my skin. Fucking scary.

Now all I can do is hiss,
pink duck tongue stretchng into space,
as people giggle at my boat-shaped body,
my ludicrous feet, my quavering,
enraged
quack.

I've been dreaming of this red haired
naked woman shot through with freckles,
peaceful from her goddamned knowing half-smile
to the silken red pit of her. Can you imagine?
She's peaceful to the guts and,
although sleep paralyzes me,
I pray for her to sit her ass down
with the rest of us, resume inhaling and exhaling out of nothing less
than habit, go down
with the wretched ego-bound ship,
so to speak,

If I listen I'm chastened
by D.H. Lawrence, "I have never seen a wild thing
sorry for itself."
Unnerving to find my soul
is a housecat
eating Whiskas out of a bowl on the floor, purring into
the lap of whoever will have me.

Counsellors, preachers, D.T. Suzuki and Oprah in their wisdom
advise us to live, not just breathe,
as though the two are different things,
as though it's possible to give substance
to the bland cold repetition of days
with psychotherapy, yoga, and a gluten-free diet.

What if the only way to live
is to breathe
from one day to the next
drunk with indecision?

Nevermind. I'm suffering priapism of the brain sentences form fractured by the force
of my everpounding heart
growling for flesh and

I shower for far too long
the pigment in my skin running
down the drain I'm bleached
bone white
vampire pure, here,
let me suck you clean.

Y'know, when they said 'take of his body'
I read it differently, I took all I
could and ran with it,
limbs and bones and floppy
sheets of disintegrating skin
falling from my arms, rolling in the dirt.
He doesn't need it, anyway. Give it to me.
I need substance.

Prary for us.