Star #1

She called me the lover who
hadn’t seen a shooting star.
Now I’m the villain;

hellhound; Lucifer falling
nine nights (chipper dearth
of sky). A five nippled

star is above me moving—
always, like a wild beast
(it glows, shapeless, groaning).

This is my light!! (dearth-of-light)
I take it all with me everywhere—
intrinsic. Each night: a shooting star—

ruffling time’s bright feathers.
It is mine! (I yell, the light) it is mine!
and it is bitter because it is all mine!

   Star #2

The rays cast out by the gold plated amalgamation
of the universe hit the eye just right as the summer
light dims in the late hours.

The anarchic heart beats in this anatomical
purgatory. Yelp! Yelp! She is standing on the edge
of leaving this world. We’ve lost our language.

We’ve lost our tongues. We are moving like ancient
slugs through this secular symbology: soup cans
and alleyways. Spit it out already! Let the sick rose

grow up, already! The sick petal of the tongue lies
dormant. Nothing ever becomes right. In the cosmic
joke of your life—I’m the jester, spangled. But I do

get to tell the tale. There once was a girl from—oh fuck it.
Once upon a time—god damnit. A pair of star-
cross’d lovers met their fate—(academic, unfaithful . . . )

   Star #3

The boys dancing slowly in their ecstatic crowns
hold one another—naked, close. Their bodies
are swan bodies—only curve and shadow. Power

comes from what we don’t want to understand (their
tenderness, their timelessness (isn’t it that these boys
live in a world outside of ours? The hand in its eternal

gesture—sweet on the other’s back)).
   In the end I thought of my mind’s disorder
   as a sacred thing.

In the end I thought two men, two boys
         a single golden piece
of straw dropped from the barrel of hay in a song

from a long time ago. An ordinary glamor. For a time
I could not recognize beauty. Who had taken my galaxy?
Dreamless, dreamless—I slept like winter.

   Star #4

Oh hush! The celestial way of love
has lost its credibility. A fingernail
of someone you love can strike

one as a star in a party’s light
when the stems of wine glasses
hang like tinsel from their hands.

It’s not impossible to believe
such a thing. Now, now, all desire
has gone—It has made my life

its own. Oh: I hope this isn’t true.
The last words of someone
who’s done you great harm.

A revolutionary magic is upon
us. Learn to believe it! It’s true—
You are a flawed and happy soul.

   Star #5

I am saying I love you
to someone else now!
When we embrace, she

lets me stay as long
as I want with my head
on her shoulder—her

hand petting the back
of my neck. In the doorway
we are binary stars to night’s

stupendous heaven. The center
of oneself is definitely
a pentagram. It brings

what it calls forth
into the bloody pit
of human nature.

   Star-Coda

Oblivion of what could be
is the cruel whirlwind whipping
through the apartment tonight.

I dragged myself through a season
so unthought-about I became
the burnt orchard of your memory.

I was the discovery of nobody.
Soon, soon, the coo of bartalk
rescued me from the season.

The starless season. There, now,
are the stars—yellow flowers, gold
highlife caps, the amber bottles

broken against sad blue dumpsters.
I live like Columba, now, the dove,
inconspicuous, barely known, now:

   burning, now: bright star—now, our history’s cold dearth of words.