There's no comfort wanting the night
                to be an oracle split open like a sigh

                suggesting this quaking should stop.
                I've cursed everything from the slip

                of the moon to Ganesh's broken tusk
                and wondered if the present is confused

You swallowed too much morphine in the morning. By evening,
the door was shut. Our room was cooler than usual. You tried to console
me by drawing me close while at the same time there was no time.

        Who hasn't made love without wondering
        whether to scratch his back with your fingernails,
        whether bruising his neck with your mouth or biting
        him here and here, then softly on his belly until
        the next day

        If it wasn't for her voice, I doubt she'd make the news
        with another sad story. That's the thing about drugs and booze.

        Someone, somewhere, just has to add sex except back
        then it was a white gardenia and a pink silky dress
        presenting a mouth torn open, the world an encore of excess.

        In sacrifices, everything is a sign: whether the animal goes willingly
        to the altar and bleeds to death quickly, whether or not the fire flares
        swiftly, how the tail curls and the bladder bursts a dream, a stumble,
        a chance encounter, even an unexpected drop of rain and this day

        Last night we offered whispered chants in that ritual
        undressing

        of how we met. Everything has significance.
        That is what you said.

        But it wasn't what you said. It was more how you
        held me that time

        The death rune is symbolised by the yew tree
        which is the best wood for carving runes made sacred
        if the myth about Odin found hanging from the tree
        is the same as card number 12 where sacrifice must be
        made to gain recognition of repetitive patterns that bind

        After kissing earth, fever peels
        skin from the hands of fate. It's rich
        enough to grow armies of men
        spearing each other in that harvest.

        I dream and am dreaming.

        I dream of his lips
        and hands.

        His mouth, his words
        but he's not saying and I haven't heard.

        Last night, he jacked off
        in the bathroom,

        undisturbed.

                I think of that kinky over
                the-top knee boot and those
                tortuous streets, enigmatic

                as the earthy ochre of Siena
                blends blood with the blessed
                Virgins simple black and white