LIBRETTO

V.

​

You must first look past 

the little corpses, the useless limbs,

the clown-faced fools 

who wear your name, the calcified 

pressures of shame. 

You must stage the terrible romance

over your eyes, cut out 

the tongues of the poor, 

unsee widows, orphans 

dropping coin into kettles.

Stuff the shorn heads with silver—

silver tongues, silver eyes,

silver-sweet hellos and goodbyes. 

Reach your hand in, brush against God-flesh.

Tear the freshly broken bread.

​

How can you account 

the cost, looking back before you scry?

How can you doubt

your own satisfactions when the sun

drops like a circular

saw into the earth’s tired face—

its keen blades searing the great rolling eye?

VII.

​

Gimme the broke skin, 

metal thorned wrist and foot,

blood volcanic wound-core—

its purple tongue-swell,

the hurt curtains draping 

the face with sweat and gore

​

Gimme the flesh filleted by cheers,

the wood turnt on the horizon,

the cut wet stuck to these fingers,

the ooze of adoration lost,  

the shame-murmuring shadows,

the heartless fist of angels,

body wretched of all feeling

​

Gimme the sinister air, 

the voice emptied of its

gravelly depths, the buzzed-

grass burnt hill, 

the prickled skull spotted red 

and achey with lack

​

​