• Erastes and Eromenos

  This will be the last time your eyes meet mine.
  -Why teacher? Am I unsuitable to you?
  No, you are suitable to me.

  We are an abhorrent aberration to them and I shall sacrifice.
  -I shall stand by you evermore master!
  No! Flee, lest their enmity yield towards thy loins!

  -Amo et te amabo semper et in aeternitatem.

  —–

  Erastes hung supported by the strength of his arms as his body dangled. His bones broken and his flesh mangled…he was displayed a vanquished man. In his delirium he sensed a presence known to him once long ago. He raised his head to lock eyes with his dear Eromenos. The sun stood still as the brevity of their solace dwindled. A bright shimmer emerged from the boy’s cloak. The metal bit into Erastes and his water flowed forth.

  —–

  Et tu, Eromenos?

• Bad Taste

  It was the spring and I was two, maybe three years of age. I was with a sitter. The dark of night had descended upon the corner of my world. I wanted to watch a show. The sitter turned out the lights—the television died as well. She gathered me under a heavy blue blanket.

  It was dark. Black. A gap.

  The door opened. Mother had returned early. I ran from the dark—a terrible taste lingered upon my tongue. Tears streamed across my cheeks as I protested the taste to my guardian. The sitter slipped through the door into the night without passing GO! and still the gap haunts me.

• Pride

  A perfect ensemble.
  A glistening parade.
  The banners are drenched.
  With the starlight’s charade.

  A sharpening movement.
  With painful repose.
  The crippled old man.
  He stiffens and blows.

  A milky white acid.
  It covers the choir.
  Searing their souls.
  Reported the crier.

• The River Muse

  Her form is shown to me. The percussive piano gives solace with a somber march permeating the cedar room. The reverberations escape through the ghastly house, as the muse covers her bits. The foci of her being remain hidden from me within this house upon the river.

  An exotic finish escapes my perverse asylum. Here Michelangelo wallows in his painted world, sculpted from the marble exposed by the yellow fog that descends upon the town.

  Under night’s baneful watch the forceful bishop enslaves his tortured talent. His cold calloused hands bleed the eyes of god, always forever present to witness the cardinal’s carnal endeavors upon the tiled floor of the house of the Father.

  And upon the eaves a threshing bird knocks itself about. The flapping fish flips away from the floundering, splashing children full grown. Nobody knows the bridge, the drum, the isle-island, sleeping, burning. Thrashing, stirring. And no one bears witness, no one fears the reaper of cloacal obsession.

  But the air runs thin, as the volley rains down, darkens the moment. The hollow reigns fading out of thought. Consideration has compromised our fulcrum and our stability is equated to the flapping of ugly moth wings in the wind. Dried and pinned, marketed as the soul of a fairy in butterfly form.

  And I wake to her lips upon mine, her thatch upon my breath. Pulls me under, drowns me in water, my soul to find its death.