did you water your books today?

A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy

grew in my mind,

which turned the hairs on my head to filthy snakes,

as though my thoughts

hissed and spat on my scalp.

My bride’s breath soured, stank

in the grey bags of my lungs.

I’m foul mouthed now, foul tongued,

yellow fanged.

There are bullet tears in my eyes.

Are you terrified?

Be terrified.

It’s you I love,

perfect man, Greek God, my own;

but I know you’ll go, betray me, stray

from home.

So better by far for me if you were stone.

I glanced at a buzzing bee,

a dull grey pebble fell

to the ground.

I glanced at a singing bird,

a handful of dusty gravel

spattered down.

I looked at a ginger cat,

a housebrick

shattered a bowl of milk.

I looked at a snuffling pig,

a boulder rolled

in a heap of shit.

I stared in the mirror.

Love gone bad

showed me a Gorgon.

I stared at a dragon.

Fire spewed

from the mouth of a mountain.

And here you come

with a shield for a heart

and a sword for a tongue

and your girls, your girls.

Wasn’t I beautiful

Wasn’t I fragrant and young?

Off that landspit of stony mouth-plugs,

Eyes rolled by white sticks,

Ears cupping the sea's incoherences,

You house your unnerving head--God-ball,

Lens of mercies,

Your stooges

Plying their wild cells in my keel's shadow,

Pushing by like hearts,

Red stigmata at the very center,

Riding the rip tide to the nearest point of

departure,

Dragging their Jesus hair.

Did I escape, I wonder?

My mind winds to you

Old barnacled umbilicus, Atlantic cable,

Keeping itself, it seems, in a state of miraculous

repair.

In any case, you are always there,

Tremulous breath at the end of my line,

Curve of water upleaping

To my water rod, dazzling and grateful,

Touching and sucking.

I didn't call you.

I didn't call you at all.

Nevertheless, nevertheless

You steamed to me over the sea,

Fat and red, a placenta

Paralyzing the kicking lovers.

Cobra light

Squeezing the breath from the blood bells

Of the fuchsia. I could draw no breath,

Dead and moneyless,

Overexposed, like an X-ray.

Who do you think you are?

A Communion wafer? Blubbery Mary?

I shall take no bite of your body,

Bottle in which I live,

Ghastly Vatican.

I am sick to death of hot salt.

Green as eunuchs, your wishes

Hiss at my sins.

Off, off, eely tentacle!