WORK FOR LOVE volume 2

prayer for release 

to the beauty of his 
no limit no bound

bathed by a lighted exit 
in the carceral institution
where he lay

with the grace of waiting
in faith long adrift

I recur
mouth my thong
lord, hear my prayer
I wear it like a sleep mask

how much longer
must I compare 
virtue in all its verticality,
a waterfall uninterrupted, 

how much longer?

god, I’m smoking and laughing and chanting and pleading

maybe I don’t believe in fate
but here I have no free will 

in spiritual transience
this brings me solace

with no measure
to the expanse
of our allotted time

I get all the reprieve
of a motel desolate
with the turn 
of a switch

can fate exist
in the same universe
as this?

I know my prayer
is singular, 
a brook, slight, a creek
but I am echoed by many
braided into river 
by spring
or seep

everyone deserves to be fucked

I pull from root to end
begging for unknown hands
to soothe me

if forces of above gathered
to pull, brush, braid my hair
maybe I could call it like I see

not that the other 
owes me what I need 

that I want to undo all a sense
of romance has done to me 

but if the erotic
presumes asymmetry
well, everyone deserves a living

I try to transcend
to higher frequencies

succumb to setting
like a piece of furniture

fucked like a table
with one leg missing

you say I should dismantle what love is to me

that I’m reflecting only what one wants to see

the air plays with my hair and I attempt to, 
what, not reach for a fantasy?

travel round back down 
bring the sky into me

my ex dreamt
I needed bail money
but had a nudging feeling
he’d paid it already

walking around in Greece, 
thinking he’d apply to jobs
picking up framed photos
that changed as soon as he touched them
holographically

in two cities at once

wading into the sea 
sure if I went far enough

in all dimensions
I could spread horizontally

mouth to sand
promising a circle can’t break

how easily
nature can eclipse a body

but with you I’m new
and don’t yet know anything 

except what I say is true
in that I felt it

I felt everything 

cover the face of my memory

by a force
gravitate to end

disturb what’s animal
in profound perverse quiet
when there’s no silence pure

in palates of moisture and muscle
sound untamed immense
in possible overflow

go ahead and vomit on it
as you are really you as I am no longer 
becoming but being in who I am really
alive by what comes

air pierced in wail
cut through window

a word first comes
like love like peace like fuck
drawn up
there is nothing I can grasp or know

in attempt to deepthroat a prayer 
without response

I long to choose my oppressor
for everything I touch to be corrupt

re-name me
in augmentation of velocity 

cover what I see
slit through finger slick
I tongue: love, I love, I love, I 

love introduces the strange by way of familiar
familiar dissolving into strange
to be in-side love
dissolving with it

never entirely dispossessed
scenes charged by emotions already experienced
bound to images, there in the past

I fuck that lay bare
scene proceed let rapture
humble without plot or need
to wet water’s goal

we did make mistakes

by what is conditioned in me
I still don’t know 

WORK FOR LOVE volume 3

Work, Shirt