I never saw your face, I saw a smile
A frown, a snarl, side-on as through water
When we did what we did—the leather, the
Melting wax, sighs, gasps, wet slaps, to want slaughter
Of all that makes us, us, so you could be
Hollowed out with pain, become the daughter
Of De Sade, be filled by a rain of pleasure
And I, so I might see haze lessen
I might see a face—alive, ecstatic
I did not
I might see your face on a card, gas-lit
In a suburban home long-ago as
A hand, dark with cocoa, pulls cards to fit
A complex pattern of medieval art
And by chance, you are pulled, that hennaed hand
With long, broken nails makes a psychic hit
The place long prepared for you is there now
Rose red
Glacier blue
Obsidian Black
Are colors for you
They deteriorate of course, into
Colors that look like burned cooking oil on a
Stream of piss under an old street light.
Do It! Do it now! Show me the face I yearn
To scratch, to caress, to make me love you
Let me discover lips in all ways
But your card, 'The Veil, the Blindfold of Thorns'
And I see nothing beyond the bright veil
I always see it, but in dreams the lace
Of the Veil, a white like the core of a
Dying sun overwhelms me, and to replace
That longing other women become my
Goal. In them I see fragments of the face
All women become gifts to me from you
Remove the veil, show me your face I beg
A featureless pure white, Venusian light
Too bright for the eyes, harsh, broken
Take that strange cloth
Reach it around my head
Pull tight the blindfold of thorns
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