31.

I imagine that woman’s braces
slicing my lips
tongue of greatness tongue

of Sparta my Achilles
tendons are jelly
at the thought

Could snap off
the bone
I walk limp

across the sidewalk
with a rip in my britches
I don’t give a (flying) rip

I don’t give a rip
if I walk on hot coals
or over thorny grounds

Have you danced
with a devil
like dust floating

in a sunbeam?
Have you felt the angels
howl for you

as you love so deeply
they mourn for you?     
My lips ache

at the thought
of your dewy mouth
pressing like a rose petal

to mine (because they never do
& never will) like
pressing Gertrude Stein’s

most tender butt
-ons
Take me up on that

like shoulders
that bear burdens
As you go to kiss

his mouth I pause
the action
I take his place

in a moonbeam
(as an objective illusion)    
What you want to kiss

is a mouth of tragedy
Horror-Eyes of Lady Macbeth    
Watch as the sea

swallows me
& at least values
my existence

to destroy me       
Why didn’t I drown
in my mother’s womb?    

Will you wipe away
your Judas Kiss-saliva
off of my cheek

as I stand in standing-water
with wounds open
in the pearly fern-furls

in our Valley of Emptiness?     
Leave me be    
Let the rope break    

Will all silky fragments
of the memory of me
continue to evaporate

& land as dewy thought
-drops in a deafening silence
that is felt by the whole orb

of the earth? I behold
its blank depths
like a landscape

of bleached snow    
tapping the sockets   
like a loose sprig

seen sprouting
from some barren scene
like a red stop sign

barely visible
in a blizzard of snowflakes    
a kind of swarming swathe

as if white locusts
were pulverizing
the perilous air