We will forever be conquistadors
engaged in a duel. Wait. Listen,

closely, to the sounds clashing infinity. I can hear the songs of your skin,
the silver psalms that cusp your yearning chest.

I see how much you want this. Body arched to wield.
Creases of spitfire dot mouthed air. We are both drunkards

itching at a scabbed fight. Response, retort, rebuttal. How else
can we speak except in voracity? Look at you:

cast-iron smile. Plated flesh. Go—arm yourself with rhetoric.
Let our feet gorge on these dust gardens of gravesoil.

Perhaps they will be bloodshot by dawn; muddied in grief.
How else can we know we are alive?

How else to live except to speak? I know you agree—I see the pathos
lining your sword. That iron-warbled life dribbles

in an artist's dialect. Precision of oration, sharpened to
teeth. Beautiful. Valuable, like ivory. Brief.

Tell me you're afraid. Tell me what you need; I'll take.
Fear is to fall without hope of flight.

Send your signal hawks away and be left wingless,
wanting worn into froth. Look. I have only ever

wanted to slash your voice from your maw,
choke heartbreak from history time and time again—

I would steal every scrap of syllable from those parted lips
if it meant I could tremble you whole.

Each strike; a sonnet, blooming.
Each block; tell me more.

Currents run red with rivulets of wine-red rust.
Assonance; lust. Hunger, unsatiated. Tell me more.

Battle is birth: metaphors switch
swords to sanctitude, endings to enigmas—

Thrust again and listen,
closely. Perhaps my soul sings a different strain.

I would surrender all my warbles if it meant you would drain
into dawn. Perhaps we cannot live like this forever.

Dust is to dust is to dust. Kinetic in movement.
Momentum circling, stalked to nothing.

Perhaps we were children once. Dizzy and
drunk on sharp-tongued time. It scratched

our throats like fishbones and the pain lingered
for days. You asked me then if I loved you

and I swiped at your prose; turned it to blade.
Sorry to dodge but I hate wounds that bleed.