Ghazal

You imply a certain instantaneous zeal,

martyrdom that ties its noose by extraneous zeal.

The hands that tie it are essentially private,

thick and heated with a spontaneous zeal.

P.S. You’re wonderful, my arbiter of taste.

Your partiality never lacks in miscellaneous zeal.

You are what lovers go to bed to, a skin

that helps them remember sleep with subcutaneous zeal.

This depiction is not to scale. Instead it is translucence,

a square that overwhelms me, maintaining us: zeal.

Spectacle

I rectify the scene with its victim’s cloture,

a wave that lifts and passes, empty

of those gawking: as it grows tighter

so does the woman, busy cleaving deafness

from the brocade. I hum through the perdition

in her knees, swim through the confusion

of her arms, the guilty thankfulness that

the scene’s main motive is confined only

to the scene. Such is realization to the senses,

what is kind and unfilling. As the relationship

between woman and driver maintains a tight

neutrality, its rashness is vindicated only

with movement, a first and last memory

of self love. It begins with the first breath,

ends with the last empty reference.

In the eyes. Of the woman. Under the car.

Rift

This happens. Shit happens,

as when yes includes sex then sleep,

your and my emotions receding in no.

Such ambivalence delivers the best whine,

as when yes includes sleep then sleep.

In the beginning there is cloture—

such ambivalence delivers the best whine.

This is the nothing that sows my seeds.

In the beginning there is cloture,

morning darkening with flesh and this.

This is the nothing that sows my seeds,

declensions that glamour in my blood.

Morning darkening with flesh and this—

as when denial includes that onanism,