She strokes his long, thick, roan plush
mane, limns and fingers through
tangles and traffic, sharp
talons trapped in rushing
snarls, matted thatch,
as he lies and moans
in her lap.

And she has powder and pink smoke
seeping through the unhealed
blood-slits of her skin.
He sucks the sugar from her cleft
as she tousles the tendrils that spill to his eyes. Rubs.
Plies him with her knead.
Tell me the secret, she implores. Fondles his feral reeds. If you love me.
(Her hands, he knows, are full of teeth.
But to lose it all inside her quivering, cuspate palm. Relieve himself
of weight. Seek asylum through frictive passage into light.)
He wields a veracious tongue. Tenders a voracious truth.
Cut if off, he says. And waits with muscles throbbing for release

And with one deft clip of razored claw she defies
his untamed bulges
and humps, some say
sinew and strength. But
in her hands, he flaps.
And flops and limps.

And though her hips are hollow
And though her lips are scarred
with charred shreds of once-acidic, once-fluidic blisters,
she can do it. Overcome.

And as she snips and prunes
him at the root, lops the locks,
slices the shaft with a swift snap of the scythe, and he writhes
in tonsorial torment, she says,
So what. It will grow back.
And she leads him to her temple
Where knifing Philistines celebrate his coming.

And now, his sockets gouged to pussing holes, he rages at his blindness. And with a simmering mouth of vengeful spit he musters all his puissant grit, he pants and groans and presses and churns until it
returns. Fuller. Bigger, thicker tresses. Once more
a bristled man of lust, soft walls pliant to his thrust,
he pinions down her pulsing heart

With pillars shoved like thighs apart, amidst the crumbling flesh and plaster,
an avalanche of burning rapture, he cries in telic spurn of capture, with one final barehand push

damned bush

Magdalene

(One)
Still unuttered
Yet so swift
Slips like water
Through my lips

(two, as new blush
virgin palms melt into silken
swallows of skin and the unseen
carnaline lash laps amber wet
limbed fire for you)

My heart will explode with it.
Ephemeral and pliant to my
eavestained fingers, and verity
glides over impurest white -

weak from you weak from it my
knees wet trembling
kittens buckle drop scuff sin
bleed like wealing penitents

Feet full of sand, bound,
boned, branded
by one fleet kiss, now
beholden to this

(Gethsemane)

Wake and purblind
moonsoaked fingers find
the fur-lined downstroke
moan, aching rose to
brown eyes closed

(Orison)

In reams of gilt-rimmed fantasy
She dreams of him impassionedly
Her whims but lyric fallacy
Chimerical reality

(Unfaith)

and love incensed by cupidic
fever gropes blind
escape in hushful
intake of tongue
and sleep, where supine indolence
props itself to some form
of slackened Eros, and every bell
is you

(Untouched)

the black dust breath of the infidel sears
His heart, cracked, halved, two cupped
hands full of ashes, His sweet form
bent, burnt, torn, acidic tears,
noli me tangere magdalene
a girl half here

and her book is shut
the dark verdancy of seven snakes
seeps slowly back to venomous blood
never quite clean

she lies prone, unwaiting, a willing
saturation of vicious gangrene