Fugue With Chemical Restraints & New Roommate

 

                        —With a line from Roger Reeves

 

 

The wages of thought are peeled gauze      this window mesh is steel, wrought,

 

            & cutting blizzards into diamonds       these floors so orange in hall light

 

rooms seem pocketed from dispensary shelves       each hour swallows me

           

                             each hour must lift its tongue       before it sleeps

 

            in the other bed, a boy       is sentenced by his dreams

 

                            tattooed lightning       branches from his eyelids to his lashes

 

shaved head, Reich flag for a back—       in this brief, animated word

 

            the alchemy’s familiar       take his shape, take half my blood

 

                          & all my name       add fields, add razor wire by the acre

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this makes nations, cloud cover       & all that happens under

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            a lover’s finger, decades later,       tracing sweat along a collarbone

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                      until he wakes, the ditches       bursting into flowers

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                                     he can’t name      this world will break again     

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            but tonight I’m made to love         more wildly than I’m made to end       

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                             it’s 1:00 a.m. & we are boys        for now—hungry, awake,

 

             & tasting every fruit       an icicle becomes in floodlight

 

                           we forget our shoes had laces     tonight, he learns my name