I introduced my Anima to my Shadow Aspect; now they are sleeping together behind my back

You are my sucking wound,
My sweet oubliette
(my little place of hiding),
For you to turn to ash in my lap,
A rarefied immolation.
How engulfing your arms,
Your legs of smoked ham,
so sweet— done to a turn,
how consuming.
Prone, your eyes are wells,
And I brink to fall
Padding through holes
Enmeshed in webs
Of candied pitfalls
And your trappings.
Your whiskied throat
Sings fine victory atop me,
And your ballast seeks to
Sink me back down deep
Into you.

♣

Even then I would
sit down on the curb
cracking wind-fallen
acorns open between
crooked teeth and spit
the shells in the
gutter which was
swept in autumn.
Did I look up
even in spring
to see the limbs
twisted in vernal dance?
Could I see them apart from
the dangling of leaves
like earrings on stretcht lobes?
Could I see then how they would
embrace me like they would when I was
drunk and sick on the lawn?
No, even then I saw them
shed with all vanity,
delivered to the passing
of the seasons,
their fancies and their patience.
So, I became used to being curbside
picking at sweet discarded meats.

♣

Far down here in the rag & bone shop,
poison nitre drips down from some
unknown ceiling and it is thee who
moans as the foundation settles upon the chest.
Here we are occupied in the vocation of
sputter and fume and less concerned by the
trivialities of clutter and gloom,
unfortunate byproducts which damn us
here apart from those we've already forgot about,
but no matter for there is much work here
so far under where filth grows beneath the boot.
Maggots cease to thrive and fungi falter,
for here the gravity is so heavy eyelids fall
but sleep cannot come. The mellowed air
that falls down shafts and passes for a breeze
hits the lung like that of a surfacing free-diver's
first breath over and again, but you and me
friend, we labor where light cannot escape the
source and who knew the silence of dead air
could be so distracting and unwelcome,
but we are so focused staring at the
little patch of void tattooed on each others
forehead. These things matter little in the
evaporation of thought, for who could not
fix a gaze on a more lovely sight than a blemish
from which not even black can flee much like
you and me.

♣

I come at night, for as she sang;
"The moon has nothing to be sad about".
I come to see you drop lazy stars from your
opened mouth, crosst your lip, and hang in
your hair like servitors, as your lifted hip
and thigh bone become the cosmos.
To see you blow smoke-rings of cirrus
clouds filled with violet & abandon,
as you lay to become the verdant range
that makes the valley.
But the bracken that breaks beneath
my boot cracks out like hell-to-open,
and there is nothing but axes and bone
to cleave the air with which you hide
your face.

♣

She whom Lilith bore to Adam on his first
day in the garden, one of thousands, would
jump up on gangly brown legs to pluck
fruit, always missing, asking snakes for
ten fingers.
She who would tickle Onan's ear with
tongues and affected pleadings for her
want and wanton.
She who reduced Solomon to a boy,
wrenching wizened whiskers which
dropped from his bald face into her lap.
She, Theodora's consort and bondsmaid,
how the Empress blushed yet yielded like
pale grass to flame.
She whom Papal Courts would douse and
fire, yet could not quench nor kindle.
She with aquiline nose, showing expatriate
Frenchmen, couriers of the wood, how hares
would leap between her legs to be crushed
by ochre thighs.
She, giving haven under a thatched roof to
Brits and Austrians on a folly,
an emissary of deepest peace,
in Bonaparte's madness.
She, who over a glass of ginger beer,
for a nickel touches the knee of a lonely dirty
dog-face, so he may raise Ol' Glory,
long may she wave.
But she, form seemingly so liquid or
wrapped in rice paper, cannot be
emptied as a bottle or ashed in a tray,
she is pungent vapors and plumes of smoke
that can drift out of doors, as well as in them,
and is more likely to stain the air, like it was
clothing, with wafting scent that leaves
none too quick.