You Got to Be Greedy
crosswards my soul and my body
but I couldn't stop rotting your ripping
my sandbags and beads.
I got so good at the red rain and blood
unfocused half-handed polar pain pills
I stayed up all night in this mystery play
rubbing my head on your bread and circus
rubbing my ribs for your airtight curses
and I read about alien lingerie.
I got so good at waiting for salt
folk songs and dances, greedy companions
that it's not hard to switch
to a hologram mourning.
You pestle our drugs in the anteroom
and it's not hard to stitch
the blight on my sonogram
as we power out/power down.
Hectic girls in the gundreams
heavy for beef
waste in their brains' rivulets.
It's like we hired those two girls as clowns
to show us ourselves then shot them on purpose.
Tales From a Hypnotist
i.
The customers lick lips for primal cuts.
A fondness of meat spirals in their DNA.
My father, his father, born to be scholars
of butchery. I was a butcher for the Legion,
young boys hunger for offal. Now, I stroll
Parisian boulevards and parks, a voyeur
of the choicest joints - they're hand
in hand, frolicking like lambs. Succulence
that promises such treats for the palate.
Yes, though blood carries the same smell,
I know some will bloom redder than others.
Humans evolve with an acquired taste.
ii.
My brother, Dafydd ap Gruffydd, fastened
to a wooden panel and drawn by horse
to Shrewsbury. Hanged there to the point
of death, emasculated, disembowelled,
beheaded and quartered - abstracted
across the realm of King Edward:
head spiked on the Tower of London;
his broken arm displayed in York;
the left arm in Bristol; his wrenched leg
and hip at Hereford. The malodorous
map of this traitor I executed to order.
iii.
She sleeps. The canopic jars wait:
Hapi, baboon headed, grins for
the breath of my lover's lungs. Duanetef,
jackal mouth drooling. Imseti,
face lighted with anticipation
of liver. Qebehsenuef, falcon eyed,
dreaming a feast of intestines. My lover's
skin glistens in oils, balanos blended
with myrrh and cinnamon. I disrobe
and share my scent, though priests paint
the shadoes with incantation. I genuflect
before Anubus. He weighs my heart.
