Club
outside the warehouse, outside the fence, the house of the neighbors sits quiet in brick. Inside the place, they’ve seen
my tattoos. They know
my name / my love of wood and skin.
A masochist wrote the passion of Christ, or a sadist / I’d be obscene at sacred Sundance / there’s a cross not reserved for martyrs
/ only on Saturday / you must drive
40 minutes thru Commerce City. Sick/sad irony,
you pay $20, unless you’re a regular. Against this X I discovered
my body / disclosure is scary / I shed my / [ ] / let my terror
into the hands of a woman holding beauty. There’s no way to know when the whip
— until it falls, snaps, heavy braids thud and she tries the lighter
leather, I jump and she knows. God / her fingers tender across my back before
again. O, when
I let the calm-eyed emblazoning in, calm cannibal
zealot, trusted, trusting, we stand with our kin,
with whips and a corset. Black, with scarlet flowers. My rosary, my starlet.
— — — — — — — — — —
Re: Cocksuckers
[re: re: cocksuckers]
To whom it concerns:
this doesn't concern you.
Don't worry.
I don't care.
Sincerely.
What does anything mean
anymore. Yours
is the sin of survival, a thankless task, the turn of the screw. Scrapping
after the insults and beatings,
Yours,
the fags and whores
in the cheap lights
and smoke, on sticky
dance floors, glare into
the gaping maw of a disco tune
and swallow,
wishbone and gizzard,
nightstick and billy club.
Thank you
for your time.
I don't know why
this doesn't concern you.
can you smile, chickenhead?
Chuckle, cocksucker.
Sincerely,
Some days are diamonds.
I don't think
I'm coming out.
it concerns you,
though it does,
severely,
Freedom
I am writing to express
I am writing to express
I am writing to express
I was petrified
You make me feel
I'm coming out
chickenhead,
that this doesn't concern
you,
cocksucker, and I couldn't
care less. And I
could.a note on formatting: Medium doesn’t allow for both indentation and italicization/bolding, so for the second poem, Re: cocksuckers [re: re: cocksuckers], spacing was prioritized as in-line code block over other formatting concerns. The color of the words is incidental to that Medium hack.
