From the far star points of his pinned extremities,
cold inched in — black ice and squid ink —
till the hung flesh was empty.
Lonely in that void even for pain,
he missed his splintered feet,
the human stare buried in his face.
He ached for two hands made of meat
he could reach to the end of.
In the corpse’ s core, the stone fist
of his heart began to bang
on the stiff chest’ s door, and breath spilled
back into that battered shape. Now
The King saith, and his arm swept the landscape’ s foliage into bloom
where he hath inscribed the secret mysteries of his love
before at last taking himself away. His head away. His
recording hand. So his worshipful subjects must imagine
themselves in his loving fulfillment, who were no more
than instruments of his creation. Pawns.
Apparati. Away, he took himself and left us
studying the smudged sky. Soft pencil lead.
I came awake in kindergarten,
under the letter K chalked neat
on a field-green placard leaned
on the blackboard's top edge. They'd cagedme
in a metal desk — the dull word writ
to show K's sound. But K meant kick and kill
Today I heard a rich and hungry boy verbatim quote
all last night’ s infomercials — an anorectic son
who bought with Daddy’ s Amex black card
the Bowflex machine and Abdomenizer,
plus a steak knife that doth slice
the inner skin of his starving arms.
Poor broken child of Eve myself,
to me, the flightless fly,
the listing, blistered, scalded.
I am the rod to their lightning.
Mine is the earhole their stories pierce.
At my altar the blouse is torn open
and the buttons sailed across
