Saint Nicholas

Saint Nicholas

For you who did it anyway

If still you linger here,

I wonder

At the stripped wires of your guilt,

flaring-

For cheap luminescence in this,

Your thick and impenetrable sleep.

Thanks,

for you with whom i have lived

These four years in a doubtful span

Of unspooled lust, worms of revenge

In my gut,

Lined with powder and ice,

you cradled between raw elbows.

This, I recall,

the copper taste of your fingers

The hard, lustrous cherry tiles

Meeting my jaw

The dull edges of your stabbing

love words

But not the swelling apex of your desire,

Slamming.

Before, the orange bottle popping pellets

As rice at a sudden wedding

At your firm invitation, my mouth brimming

With liquor and desperation,

Still then beyond recapture,

Bleached and naive to your touch.

You, without me there,

Pounding muscle to bloodless flesh

Were I to dissolve into London cityscapes

Out that soundproof window,

I would leave you with my bottom half,

Surrender and

line my bones up all the way

Across the rusted tracks to lay me home.

But I forgave as fast

As blackened snow

It was Christmas two days past

And one is meant to press these things

Between the pages turned, unread

The corporeal strike,

love left for dead.