Democrat, Illinois - The ElectroLounge

40 !
“Tender hours & compassion!” he roars to shake
the labyrinth’s countless floors, where
some torsos laugh & ride harder, hearts
blindly touch & gnaw close, & others
kneel for the manacle, the cruel tongue,
hope that best high begins sunken low.
“What passes while simple faces watch clocks?”
as he departs me. “What better hustle than
any king’s great cry to war, luring gestures
to easy superiority, any preacher’s offer
of a God that favors one over another,
than to cast a stripling squalling into this
world with no better explain that what his
answerless race can offer?”
“What purpose?” I roar at the Beast when
later I come upon him drowsy with sup,
something sweet & taken held close. “Why ferment,
why breath, why dream? Why want’s rootless tangle?”
The Beast circles me but does not lunge
again, now knows the peril in this. “In every
hour since the night she fell, she arrives
in the clearing shaped like a temple
in full moonlight, now a wanting half-child
again, dressing for his every pleasure in
glaring new love’s ceaseless pitch.”
We clash as I try for his sweet prize,
without his strength I can only sing &
sing again, wake the hour’s tenderness & compassion.
“Nothing divides us but the walls hands
have made,” he told her that last night,
burning private words into her hips & shoulders,
with candlewax & her seething blood & night’s
frankest juices, as she lay before him
a wide open eye in love, soft croon of bones,
moaning & crying their nights a blind
blowing wash to the sea.
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