visitor

 

was he following me?

he heard pain cry

when my bones were still wet clay

came to visit in my white walled

white bed alcohol smelling house

he took my leg: my left leg

left it a foreign thing

he bought mystics

made them carve my gold into their palms

before he returned it

seven nights i kept vigil

unable to name my own limb

then he left me as quickly as he came

all was well until

he came to the house of questions

this time he stole my back

left me a pillar of salt

when my voice had just found its teeth

they forged me a spine of ghost-light

just to crawl home

then came the mystics again

with their vials of forgetting

to take my gold

not long after, he unclenched his fist

when the sky grew tired of counting,

he came again

this time with a beautiful white box

he took. he took. he took

my map, my scaffold, my engine

he made pain cry

the mystics, ohh the mystics

this time being only one

with its nectar of oblivion

took my gold my precious gold

a moon’s turn i slept in their glass belly

before being set free

he might come again

and the mystics might take my gold

until then i spend them

on lust and ebony poetry