All the spring weather, while the
Flowers are in bloom, he is
In bloom, too. Every day he
Is drunk all day long.
Lu Yu (trans. Kenneth Rexroth)

* The masseuse’s wedding ring slides in oil along your husband’s back; she still wears it faithfully, even after it guided him to orgasm.

With spoiling sidewalk razor blades
and
narcissistic subjective idealism
I wanted to scar something
pretty
so I desecrated the world’s face,

Whirlwind, silently scheming my fall
To rise again in your broad arms
Where your forehead kiss
Upon our native land, aimlessly cold,
Would see betrayal’s new sweetly name. 

The octopus struggles, though it died
minutes earlier at the bubbling tank;
the cleaver chopping and recoiling,
first the bulbous orange head,
an ax through cantaloupe flesh.

Girls with thin lips
complain into their cigarettes.

But even they
can’t violate their own beauty.

After we were released from the Lakeview Jail—
I was a material witness who couldn’t swim deep
enough to reach a heartsick lover searching for
her son, and Charles Two Hats was disorderly,

the kitchen sits
in fruit soup…
steamed apricot
mango shadow

down thru spinning
smoke into hot light
blink beat

Adept at alchemy we change nectar
to richest light-filled gold for Queen,
her Kings and thirsty hive.

You emerged a crimson flower, sour
from fermentation, radiating damp,
tepid, twice-born and sheared, piled densely
into plastic bags for street-side markets.