staff of asclepius

This poem appears in The Love of a Good Man.

For Rod Moody-Corbett

it is always early in your country
and i love you for this

like the morning loves its cockadoodledoos
(emphasis on the doodle


I am on the crapper
after giving the millstone my all

recollecting a twelve-year-old's
vaginal bestiary of mind

alien vs. predator
(though always more former than latter


with the telemetric dropsy of our age
i don't need figures or facts

i don't need a metric for lonelineſs
                      lickety split tickety boo

it is too early still  but here I am
the victim of long liquid shits from birds


(avenging ortolans fondus
sans either veritas or vino

i shall call thee the male sunrise
the tentative and tender auroron

pallidus mane that moves across the ciels
the buffer zone between myself and teleos


my spine and soul they wind around my ache
like mapplethorpe's caduceus (or worse

back of the bass rubbed by a loving knee
letters from hermes/aphrodite's son

how it all shines and fits (when it wants it can
both do and go against your nature


and what of the man?
he wipes his torso with sawdust and moves on

nothing is knowable
save for love