everyone steals from puccini

agony, agony, dream, leaven, and dream

1.
i did have a vampire lover once. he came out of the night with blood like rubies on his lips, blood glistening on his mouth like micated silt at the bottom of a wine-dark sea. he liked to kiss me on my pulses. and he brought me white roses. my purity, he said, attracted him like a death's-head hawkmoth to a vestal flame. anyway i slept with him. but i was drunk when i did it.

2.
since all forms
broke.
loosed

like oil
from a split lamp.

3.
the apocryphal pembroke was, it has been determined, in a forest. moths and serpents abounded, apparently; the green trees and the dappled ground were both present as was requisite. lupine bloomed exquisitely* and from tree to tree hanged strung spanish moss as if it were catgut spun out and slack on a lute's rosewood fingerboard. he wrote thus:

with the world as my bier.

he was crazy; the squirrels ate his parts. but my eyes are raw for him.

4.

it demands of you:

wrap its wrists

in her black hair

when it is dead.

5.
[excitedly]
...sent to me from Heaven
Straight from the throne of Glory,
Take one last and careful
look At its poor face!
That its memory may linger,
One last look!
Farewell, beloved! Farewell, my dearest heart!
Go, play, play.