How to Love a Monster
For Peter Lorre


Only when I'm lost in your embrace do I forget
the horrible thing you are. Though at times
I think it's only in your mind
that you actually formed yourself like a god
out of a steamy mixture of boredom and frustration.
I know you could from the way you touch me
the way you inhale. I watch you taking it in
each breath a consideration, each sensation its own opinion.

I hang on to every particle you breathe
the way you hang on to every grain of morphine in your blood.
I hang on to your lugubrious smile, your passionate futility.
I've lost you so many times and lose you each consecutive second
then tear myself apart trying to find you again.

It's my devotion which matches your futility.

I'm trying to listen.
Meanwhile, my ears tuned to the noises outside my window
which make me think of a choir going through a meat grinder
and how this whole ritual is the psycho-killer of my thoughts
my best judgements.
My fingers slide along the saliva on your hip
they uncover a snail trail. Its lacquer shininess divides you
into shapes that wish they could rest together more closely.

You are still impossibly beautiful.

I make noises when I look at you; your roundness
the static in your eyes, the angles of your blanched details.
It's your beauty that effects that perfect dissolution
that causes people to tense when they see you
to talk to you as though you could take possession
of their tongues by grabbing their words.