I cannot imagine a world where there is no light
and moments pass too quick to gather.
Spinning in the churning waves are vapid hopes that break apart like sea foam.

Do I have the faith?
Will the spirit ever reside in my soiled temple?
Might I pass the test of life and slumber no longer in the dark waters that baptize me?

Even as I fall through this lonely life and words fill me up,
I cannot force these questions out. It was a love that did this to me.

I learned of this new love through scripture and it is that love that anchors these questions in my frightful reality.

I cannot rationalize religion into obscurity nor might I peace myself together after it has been exorcised.

So death is my river of cleansing and sin the ink that make the waters black.

I wept so often as a child and watched my tears add to the waters that would come to sweep me into the deep.
Slowly I came to realize even at such a young age that I would be the one to condemn myself.
One moment will come to decide my world, my faith, and my life.

I would wield the scythe against myself.

My words will strike out my soul and all that is of me will wither and perish.
My words will scatter and swallow me into a pit from which I cannot rise.

So much I wept for myself.
I wept, prayed, and begged nightly for a death of white that would keep me from my condemnation.

I dreamt of death as my one true salvation. I dream of death still.

This is what I learned lay beneath every sermon, each Sunday I fought to hear the word.

I smuggled this one true glory home and buried it in the fertile earth of my twisting heart.

Salvation is in abandonment.
Truth lies in torments inconceivable.

To know God’s unfathomable love, it is my privilege to suffer.
To know God’s unquestionable mercy, it is my privilege to die.

A cube sits in the corner of a ______ walled island. The soft sea is a color of _______ letters.

An angel falls from the ________ its ecstasy, hailed as a black miracle.

Shapes crumble unmistakably on one another, but the three-sided, my mountain of Anubis, _____ illuminates with the passing of the jackals’ screams.

Creeping Death
comes quick
as serpent’s
deeper kiss.
Long in tooth and thoroughly ensnared.

Reverse the crucifixion
of the round, and hail
the faded garlands of
the aged. Make fools
of those who think
themselves profound,
a bitter freedom
sought by the profane.

The seeds of
soft skinned plums
remain inside.

The flesh is far too sparse
To see them fall.

Bone
blossoms take their place
upon the stage.

Red rivers

perished for the curtain’s call.

Lustful crowning
crimson flowers
degrading
candied tears
neither
s
w
e
e
t
nor
bea(titutdes) u(ndone) t(ransformed) i(nto) ful(filment)

Don’t Be Like Me
Fuck.
Suck.
Rage and run.
Blow your brains out
with self-love.

Don’t be like me.

Fight your mother,
fight your father,
fight your obnoxious
pimps, whoring you out
for peasant profits.

Don’t be like me.

Flee from abuse and call
it what it is—
the traps of love.

Masturbate your way
into Nirvana,
juxtaposing
perfectly
perversity
and piety.

And as you walk
conflicting paths,
of heroin addicts
and sodomites
of ascetics
and nuns,
cultivate
kindness
exceeding
the pure.

Be the unloved child
of diverging bloodlines.
Reveal the folly of the saints.

-Denzel Scott