Orpheus, Lot, Slingshot


certain words snap our heads back,
our brains miscalculating the trajectory of language
so that the word quiet takes us back to the time
when silence turned savage
 
we were doing so well — 
we made our bodies like dolls,
dressed them in adulthood
and sanity, walked them
until we heard the barking
 
of masculine, weight, failure,
looked back 
and you know how the story goes:

salt, underworld, 
and now the plundering
of our spirits
 



Questing Beast


if the speaker is not a believer,
it’s just a pack of dogs
driven to the streets by hunger

others can’t forget the barking
they swear came from its stomach,
but can never say what it is — their 
words shrouded in shadow and wonder,
as if born from their mouths with a caul

yet there are some who say
it was silent, stood drinking
water from the storm drain
with its serpent’s tongue 
on the day ****** was shot
 
but there is always a boy — 
tired and scared, on the brink,
in between truth and prophecy — 
who wakes encauled in sweat and moonlight
mumbling an atavistic chant:

i’ll kill it before it kills me
i’ll kill it before it kills me
i’ll kill it before it kills me




David Wojnarowicz, 1981

Like the pale moon waning,
his face is shrouded in night.
My eyes are captivated
by the ridges, shallow 
little wrinkles around thin lips
that refuse to smile.
 
The description says
he died a few months after,
and I can no longer call 
the photograph beautiful— 
for what is beautiful about the end
of a young man’s life?

What is beautiful about
eyes that refuse to close,
vigilant against the terrible,
terrible thrashing of wings?
 



A Show


see ghosts re-flesh,
drape used skin
over hollow lives
​
see botched resurrections,
half-formed men
turn eyeless
to god, who forbids
circles from starting
again

see them stalk death
down dark alleys
of first times, last times

see him throw his cape
like a magician
and make unbelievers disappear,

reappear as prophets
of words like lonely