The Lucifer Cantos 2/13

II

My buck, my shy puck, my slenderly fuck,
anglepoise hips in contrapposto pose,
full cocked — a paeon to your peter!
Onflamed and anointed in rich red wine,

green-garlanded in darkwood vine,
streamlighting sun through hair and down
your forest dawn. As morning star,
dew glistered web, I am your alastor.

Scruff of your neck, lip-biting coy —
how could I hound less fickle-faithful boys?
How can I parse this strange Arcadian Death,
in mutter of oath, in rhyme of breath?

*

Fourteen thin years, each Spring a sonnet’s line,
I wound gut fear in gently tighter twine
around my heart, till in white-knuckled fist
the volta bit as a garrote’s slight twist.

The chickenwire in spite’s assassin hand
cut through the meat of lack no runt can stand,
sliced out that clod of rotted pump, sick waste.
I whined to Death, bid mayhem for the grace

of a night jaguar reeling in its cage.
At swift sixteen I swore, whore to raw rage,
I’d barter life for steerage on the Styx
to deal with devil, swallow flames and tricks.

Death rapped the door, my brother’s body in his arms.
You are that beast, he said, born with his charms.