I have sinned and, god willing,
I will sin again.
All we are are sinews stretched,
Pulled taught like a beat,
The snap of a whip, a hand
A handsome man who whispers
"I like to hurt" before he tongues
the barrel of the gun,
Tasting the ash and gunpowder
Of Antediluvian deaths
Without so much as a blink
Of shame,
Or of understanding

I unearthed you in a peat bog,
An ancient sacrifice cut
Down by early blades, hoes and
Rakes escaped from the field
Where the crops lay fallow
The gods heard, they did,
Because the rain came the day
After.
You saved them, you know;
What a proud, decayed body
I hold here in my hands
What a hero I've resurrected

I've found you in silt deposits,
Lying asleep in deep-sea caverns
I never gave you access too,
Whispering lies to the sea-folk
Who tell me my nightly stories
They came at me with wormy tongues
And fish eyes, humanity sliding off
Much too easily for comfort
Their arms smelled like your arms,
Their sweat was your sweat,
Their seawater in my lungs
Your toxic breath as I choked,
And sputtered, and retched
On some rocky foreign shore

We should be able to burn memories
And fuck those who say that memories
Define us, that the past is always
necessary
They know nothing about us, nothing-
I want to burn you to a crisp,
I want to burn us to a crisp,
To clutch at the folds of your stolen
Priest's robes and cry stigmata from
My eyes as we drown in fabric

My mind is an animal
It will eat of you, tendons and bone
Blood offered up from the mouth of a
Supplicant, nubile bodied
Young warlady.
Her name matters not.

O, is this your offering?
Is this the skeleton you wear
Like a shell on your back?
Ribs over ribs,
Clavicle over clavicle,
Overlapping maze of biology
And calcified words
It's a good place to be
For an animal, worse for a man
Worse still for a woman
With a seed to carry and plant.

The land is barren still
The bog has swallowed all, inhaled
Like a great toad and digested
The atmosphere easily
Like it was always meant to be so

Let me write of you, like you're one thing,
A thing to hate and cut out-
But you are an idea, haunting
About my face like a gnat in summer,
Burrowing into my skin like
A leech in summer,
Infecting me like a virus whenever I
Try to snap the chains connecting us

And O,
O foreigner,
Let me tell you of our place
In this cosmic maelstrom,
This menagerie of senselessness
This wide open wound that
Gushes nectar like a river
Down our chests,
Pooling under us like
Afterbirth-

It hurts. It hurts tenderly,
A lover shoving his knife
up under your ribcage
As you scream out bliss

It burns. You light the pyre
And you'll burn with it,
For better or for worse.

You are alive.

Deal with it.