Tax on Life
Tax on Life
From the mute ones' silence rise the dregs of dying light,
like bottomless voids — voices swallowed whole by nameless night,
folk garments on bare skin, emptiness dressed up in ache —
a kiss is life's tax, paid so gently, half-awake.
Borrowed rut — the routine of memory drops like frozen rain,
serial suicide, matter that passes and can't remain,
a fledgling of nothing floating above the unborn hour —
the executioner of ideas cuts them all before they flower.
The monastery's perfume-ash still burns and calls me in,
monkey rosaries, devil-horned priests — a holy discipline,
perverted monks strip-tease your eyelids down to snow and prayer,
cigarette smoke drifting lost through aching, hollow air.
Ballast of your languid heart, petals of a man who cries,
building unfulfillment deep into the subtle nights,
the coming beast howls from the shadow of an extinguished year —
the dead hour's man seeks harbor in himself, untouched, unclear.
Infirm crime on the firmness of thighs — your secret heaven weeps,
the satanic apple drops its darkened flower, bleeds and seeps,
the paranoerotic of all loves burns me like desire detained —
everything: an unpaid kiss, an endless void, a void unnamed.
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