my ruby eye

O you, who have suckled her bones
who have frowned at her horses
who have fingered her emerald
and now would taste her ruby too

and have i not enough exhaled
her undertowing rose at you
salt-sticky; here is sea-foam on skin
here are pregnant transparencies

and have i not already tossed
such tender and hard-bitten kisses
for sheath, another kris today
treasure accumulates like sand

behold an ever-angled wound
the spindle-pricked porosity of red
i am a self cutting gemstone
i bleed the emptiness of tools

i fling magenta words at birth
behold my prolonged scar of it
historical, faceting pre-wonder
tip that breaks her ice-pick tongue

she was a pirate and a fool
she ate the plexing devil fruit
vermillion stretching pelvic nerve
whose diadem lusts after you

and who is blinded by her kind
my fascination will glint cruel
sent basilisk or blushing bride
your fear will not take care of her

the heart, the fist, the appetite
when Cleopatra mounts insight
my empire burning leonine
by Mars, love’s favored principal

this reign of crimson tears divine
but sanguine as she’s gentle still
barefeet may meet the salad vine
and blue by babbled river’s chill

just so, what beggar wears my crown
is dying round the wheel again
out of her time, out of her mind
sweet dance, my dove perpetual

take this, the heartbeat of a sow
and let it flex upon your palm
it’s wet, the rumbling scarlet jet
now let her throb be thunder found

red wreath for convert cry, the end
how pilgrimage of period stain
i am in time, in time, will out
my ruby eye of her disposable throat

or not nothing
for saving the phenomena II
and more