Every time I put my dick in something I think about death

+ every time – I think of fingers raining like leaves

My aunt said he’s gay he’s getting AIDS – 
                        it was the tone
                        not the words
                        full of truth –

The void of oppressive thoughts
    full of carnival music – an organ grinder
        a monkey in a little hat + vest on a unicycle refusing to stop –

I’ve always assumed that hell was Diana Vreeland’s apartment – 
contrasting patterns + the scent of peonies
causing the eyes to fuzz until you cannot discern color from self –

I would enter – thinking about death – + try not to place my nudity on her
things

An eternity of trying not to place nudity
anywhere –

When I was a boy the world had AIDS – it was on TV
    Magic + Freddie + Rock + that boy Elton John was friends with

In Africa everyone literally was dying of it – or of starvation

                        it’s the same thing –

Peonies have developed the need for ants to crack their buds – the ants would starve without + the peonies would never bloom –
        
        this is a beautiful lie –

Every time I put my dick in something I think about death

The air is cold in this room – hums with the idea of being less so

It is Christmas + my aunt is dying – her head lulls between the TV selling
jewelry + her lap – she is breast less belly button less nipple less –
                        less less + less +
                        less –

She tells me she loves me –

we sit in silence –

+ watch a giant amethyst spin slowly on a pile of ice

The little deaths – small like toys – the ones we can’t hear – my death is one of those

This could be the time I start that death

Wind the turn-key on its back + set it off
    down the road with primordial clockwork scythe
        bubble solution Styx

I carry a coin I found on an airplane as it hovered in the liminal space between day + night over the expanse of the dust bowl
                        – a yuan –
                                the mandarin a series of lines I will never transcribe – for the bubble boat man when it is time

Amethyst – a protector stone – preventer –
    its name comes from the Greek ‘a méthystos’ –
        to be not intoxicated
                    to never drink the poison of youth
                    to not find the waters of forgetting

                    when I put my dick in something –

Michael J. Wilson teaches at the Santa Fe University of Art & Design. His first book, A Child of Storm, is out from Stalking Horse Press. He posts new work daily on his website – wilsonmj.com