Apotheosis

 

What is divine?
I draft maps,
a list of landmarks:
        birds,
        flames,
        the stars
to calculate distances,
the travel needed to meet a deity
I can live with

I consult a lover’s lips, the way
his tongue slips with ease
between my thighs-like silk
through the eye of a needle-
softly shaking
the skin’s layers awake,
until the quakes kick in,
breaking the great sepulcher
of the brain from its foundation

You consult altars, the way
beads weave between,
becoming fingers. Replicate,
reiterate, to venerate ancient deities
with hymns and prayers,
                 Our Father who art in Heaven
with knees raw,
                 forgive us our sins
with submission, pleading for redemption,
                 lead us not into temptation
a stone cradle rocks you, softly, asleep
          but deliver us from evil
in the bare branches of surrender

Are we merely blood-letting?

Purging the stagnation from our veins,
driving bad humors away by
redefining renunciation so that
Light-headed,
nearly syncopal,
I lie, tethered to iron,
You bow, wedded to wood

To take precautionary measures
my lips
lock into my lover’s neck,
teeth gnawing leather 
yours 
ripple in chains of prayer
 before the fits

And, revelations, through skin or stone,
prayers or moans,
happen.
It’s the way our eyes roll back
to search the brain
for something familiar

It’s when we, tremulous, release screams that climb
octaves in taut gasping breaths
belly pulled in
pushed out
hard and supple
fist and palm
denying and inviting
breath

It’s the final exhale that snaps
the diaphragm
free of its core

Before you flail and fall to the floor,
with a final Hallelujah,
flapping arms like an epileptic

Before my lover’s body, brackish and damp,
slips along my back
so, like salted slugs,
he and I stick, then melt
into an unmade shape