MARY

Mary had a little lamb.
It gave her indigestion.
And everywhere that Mary went
she had to use the restroom

LEPIDOPTOURISTS

Folding these my genitals into the soft privacy of the parched cocoon. Careful, Lust! Do not disturb that gentle dust. Lightly, precisely, park your eternal lips against my forever mouth, fasten firmly in place. Yes! Twin thoraces fixed just so! to allow free articulation of limbs in the moon's easy breeze, And, now, our skins unzip along spines, splurge toward the distant vacuum beyond the edge of the sheet, until your wings purple lurid under the lunar fluorescence iron themselves indistinguishable into mine (soft-yellowed).
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh. More leaves in someone's unremembered book. All, the rest, is settled. Only our eyes bulge up, multifaceted and questing, from the petrified flatland. Until mourning dawn shakes again the pin loose and fossils rewake.

WHAT YOU WILL

You intruded my soul--
the whirlwind
amidst my feathers,
the typhoon
among my waters--

Some might call it love and, some, religion
but I’m satisfied to call it passion.

And then our thread despoiled,
the balloon
discovered fetters,
our garden
became our desert.

Wild/still. Static/ecstatic. Push/and/pull.
Anarchy/enchained. -- Call it what you will.

HERBERT’S REVELATIONS

Ancient George Herbert
--an only poet
known for piety--
when he was dying

was able to put
out another tome,
TEMPLE: SACRED POEMS
AND (it said) PRIVATE

EJACULATIONS!!
Oh, what a volume!
--The hypocrisy
of pious clergy

and their secret sins!
Exposé I sought.
But this was not that.
Just more holy din.

Honest George Herbert,
patient preacher-poet,
proved his piety
even when dying.

AMANUENSIS CUNNILINGUS

My tongue is your servant
you keep at your desk
to dictate to fingers
the words from my mind

in praise of your beauty,
in praise of your worth.
If only my body
consisted of tongues.

My tongue is your serpent
you keep for your cleft,
whose electric tingle
wiggles and entwines,

for love and in duty,
and promotes this verse.
If only my body
were made out of tongues.