PLATO’S FORBIDDEN ART I

Imperative for a Listener:

Do not allow for resonance.

 

Words will impede you

on their own

and augment your vibrations.

 

Make love concrete,

or do not make love at all.

***

 

SAPIENS APIARY

 

They’re more afraid of you

than you are

of them.

 

They

are small, but

there

are hundreds

 

of winged pulses.

 

Mechanical.

 

Operational

by parameters

of a dreamt-up geometry.

 

Go out—get out.

 

Vermin of habit

are afraid.

***

DASYPODIDAE FIDE

I don’t suppose you know

how hard it is

to fouetté

in a suit of armor

in the sand.

 

I will say:

The joints get rusted,

worn with dusted grain,

And then refuse to bend.

 

And anyway,

armor was built for people;

they are not round.

 

So, I could have the metal shaped,

or you could lift me from the floor.

***

COLLARBONES

Sometimes when

I think about your collarbones,

 mine, too, feel fragile.

 

And then,

I think about my left hip:

 you used to press two fingers

 where it meets my thigh.

 

     Isn’t that a good spot?

 

Never mind the illicit.

Pulsestop.

    Pulse stop.

***

PLAIRE

Justice was not done tonight

by your standards of

exposed skin.

 

Fever for you

differs for me

when brought to a rolling boil.

Stop.

Wake me at four

in throes

of why we did not touch;

 

of why,

this one time,

didn’t we fuck?

***

PLATO’S FORBIDDEN ART II

Imperative for a Listener:

Do not become one.

 

Language sinks in

on its own;

the professions permeate.

 

Make memory concrete,

or do not make memory at all.