Heilige Totschlag Suche gut gebauten Achtzehn- bis Dreißigjährigen
zum Schalchte Der Metzgermeiste

A lonely heart, so sad, but true, alone
upon the dish. I loved him: as he did me.
For as the knife struck home, his moan
of pain poured out; a sangaree
more delicate than flowers, a draught
of passing loveliness, his final gift.
How when we shared the final meal we laughed!
His presence would outlive our mortal rift.

How close he is, I cannot start to say.
For when I kissed his face before it froze,
I could have sworn his eyes were full of tears.
Although I miss his words, his silence, his way,
when I sit down to dinner, I think he knows
the presence of his absence disappears.

Kleider Machen Leute

You wear it all so well: the six-inch heels;
the stripes of scarlet lipstick on your lips,
for the boys dream of knowing how it feels
when you stroke them with your slender fingertips.
They want to taste the skin beneath the basque,
to inch their hungry mouths across your chest
—but they’re too wet to force you, or to ask
if they can trace their tongues around each breast.

When sometimes as you’re reaching down to shave
before you put the S&M gear on,
you wonder if your pussy-worship fan
—who promises to be your worthless slave—
would sniff around you if he knew that none
of this is real: that you aren’t, in fact, a man.

Homage to Catamenia

The sight of slaughter makes you want to retch:
the rip of knife on throat; the stink of blood;
the frothing horse’s stagger, its heavy thud;
the whicker on the lips of every wretch
beheaded in Iraq. The likelihood
that you might be in love with gore’s a stretch
too distant to accept—no reason that you should.

And yet, the slit you made when chopping meat:
the way you bit the skin and sucked the stream
of gushing red, like a vampire with a fleam,
was rank, bizarre—and oddly indiscreet.
And when you said she woke up from a dream,
her legs wide-open, your hands upon her feet;
her coming as you scarfed her clotted cream.

Tear-Gilder

Dragon’s hoard of light, draught
of subterranean sun sought, drunk
in darkness, and dreamed across the hunk
-hemmed coast you are; carved, laughed
out by fable; gold, glossed in flux,
pitching in the broad banking burn
that shrives taint’s traces in its turn
of raging love: Rex Lux:

wilderness of wonderment
fund, and font of dazzle-drop,
let me luxuriate, crave the crop
of fluidity your firmament
expels: preserve this sweetest hour
when heavens fall: a golden shower.

Author Note: The Perversion Sonnets are a deliberate subversion of the idea of courtly love. At the same time, their premise is that love, no matter how alien or disgusting in its actuality, is ultimately the same emotion in all its manifestations.