the trash kisser

they stiffen beneath crowns of willows, myrtle rags hanging off their blisters,

tourniquets of ruby slinking down their welted legs

two boys I used to watch play and undress

dead cats with barbed-wire combs or ice

skates: renal, fur, clot gliding across

banks of viscera soothe, freshly screamed

puddles glittering over all those tiles

of their cement playpen on White Island

now they are skinny with wind dinners, flint eyes milky under goat-fur scabs,

bound in chigger sheets of splendour carriage puss

one shouts my name my name warning

he can taste phlegm through the AC ducts, 

but that’s only my hive-lips snarling 

again, chapped from serrated bills, skin

flocks in gutter lakes, the other tickles

in his shit crib, lullabies breed in his neck

they tighten a serene flinch, their frigid veins make sounds like gold maracas, 

weed surrounding firs of royal vortices, splice quietness 

see, my chest organs are special yet

strange utensils, lab mice kept beneath

stern brackets, subdue discovery as they

devour their maze, allowing notes of filtered

kiss all the fretwork of my throat altar:

cold boys tend to light up within gland privilege 

now they are splintered with raw tubes, their sight returns as stomach acid,

voices flatten into chorded looms, wounds irregular

for Frank