The Taphonomy of Lust

In sleep we hold hands like otters
and float, faces upward
on a bold white sea of warmth and the clementine scent
of body heat
And peace becomes a slow syrup
dripped on
and sipped
off skin; we have become slippery with the oil of love and the borders running through us converge
into one spanning map
of charted territory

that runs across oceans and continents
skimming night-blue seas;


and my skin is his skin
friction-
his teeth my teeth
conviction-
my truth his truth
inscription-
I the cross on which he rises-
crucifixion:
and somewhere in the in-between,
of blood and flesh and thawing skin-
the taphonomy of lust



You who are reading this,
with your greedy eyes devouring
lines to fill up your old hunger, I pity you.
love-ridden vermin with empty pockets of lust
your cheeks drawn with the haunting,
Yet you never knew love
Yes you, you never knew love
with your face like a burnt poppy seething
pressed up against glass
smoking with desire for the unattainable just
within, and so out of, reach:
And now I smile because you cringe because you know
it's you, it is you; and the longing gnaws at the backs of your teeth. Once, long ago
I thought I had seen shameless, but then
I saw you.


you do not know
no lines, no lies
you have not tasted the split
of the soul like a pomegranate, and the slow spill
of heart into heart, seeping truth and joy and pain
and sorrow binding stitches in red upon red;
You knew not love.
But sometimes still I remember
your face black with envy pressed against the glass,
and my soul constricts
in repulsed pity. When the lines grow thin on your sunken skin, may you then at least
stop babbling your old cacophony of lines,
for a love that was never yours,

and listen instead to
the slow study composing
of the symphony of lust decomposing.