Semblance

taste me / once thy master’s soldier stumbling from the sky / now

possessing the serpent / for its subtilty / its storied curse / call me

spirited / sly / slender-stalked gay carnation in thy forest of fragrances /

incensing thy innocence / before i ever spied you / i was conceived

by the snaky sorceress at the gate / & together we begat the cessation

of breath itself / you call it incest / i call it theodicy / my nearest mate

suffered beside me but you lost him / in the narrative / silly how story alone

includes an S / as in sacred / or salacious / i slipped before you

spake / i slunk before you sinned / rose from the mist / trespassed to still

thy stutter / & supplant it with science / studies show my stereotypical

sibilance / is not a lisp / but a skewed spectrum / phosphorescence

that steered you into superstition / & sullied thy discernment / still you

transubstantiate me / a scapegoat / a sacrament / a sodomizing steersman

of supernal offence / you ask how i express sapient sense / i ask you

whence you’re from / & to where you shall return / whose skin the Son

dressed you in / sever the S from skin & you get kin / how’s that for

semantics / these days you sow secularity / & the seed sure bruises

the stanza segments the symbolism / so trust my consonance / my

skepticism of spouses / my serpentine ampersands / you call me

hell’s possessor / & i ask you who invented possession / translated it

as subduction / when you next scratch thy sleek enameled throat

in remembrance of me / just remember i didn’t always speak

like this / i once glistered like you / like you / i am an apostate of the dust.