SAFE WORD

for Charlie & Eric

Yesterday you got married and today you write about 

       being beaten

like a shield, hammered pleasure, surrendered gold.

If I were beaten it would be like an egg.

That is why I avoid it.

I avoid it because I have no father.

I avoid it in a dish of money.

There is only one cock between us and

it makes me sad as tissue paper.

Yesterday you were not ironic among the roses

man to man saying love was solid

as Sparta’s marble bones.

Today who watches you hang in the harness

groan in the traces

split from your skin like a shot crow?

Love, but not only him.

If I said husband it would mean padlock.

It would mean camouflage of two foxes under snow.

Two baby foxes under the unbroken glide of the bird’s shadow.

(continues)