epistle

every creature suffers some shade of intimacy
knowing the wilderness always was
the better friend, the one so willing
to share a two-man hat

this democracy of thought
shows no bibliography against
my face with odds inside
each feature, the very leather 
of responsibility

sinking, seeping
a cold-blooded touchstone-
a featherbone too much
to touch again;
broken at the doorstep
of self-nostalgia
on some inexcusable sunday
of the heart

a mutant voyeur, watched
to death like old toxicology
worried what foreigners might do
to sublet his crowded partnership
from its soft garage of pretty
 
yet cruel with magic
at last willing to accept
its violent number
on your twisted little abacus.


Previously published by Poems Niederngasse