He had never cleaned his razor
or so it seemed,  now
six months
since his death

the aged Norelco passed along
to his first born and
only son
black gray whiskers

once stubbled upon his face 
unwanted and 
unloved
dead yet interred not

upon the rest of him,  fey 
relics sacerdotal yet
unsainted
how now to enshrine them

strayed,  aberrant from grief’s
ceremony,   from earth
grounding
urned,  perhaps,  within

easy memory;  commingled of
a morning with his
own slivered 
beard of black and gray. 
 

Neotony

Emasculation, premature
evisceration, puerile
castration,  infantile

his forefinger pointed
his thumb cocked back

across the table so
inveigled,  the little girl
did waggle

too violent an act
this vile attack
of finger and cocked thumb

"it might go off!
was the safety on?"
said principal
unprincipled

missiles rained on Baghdad
bombs fell on Kosovo

children 
who remember closely
their last death
cling not
so tenaciously to life
 

Eve

Her diptych tongue
long dwelt within his navel
traced
the knot of
his umbilical
untethered

slithered
now down Adam's trunk
forbidden
Tree of Yahweh's Garden
defoliated and
unhidden

knowledge of death
and life
of causation 
and damnation

now within her hands
did grasp 
the serpent's gift 
of
procreation
 

Past Lives, Continued

"We have had
a hundred lives together
you and I"
she said,  abed

cigarette smoke acurl
about her tousled
blond-gray head
"in Rome,  before Caesar

spurned his crown, you were
a vestal virgin,  I was
a centurion"  she inhaled
"I raped you

behind a temple veil"
the smoke her face
adumbrated as a pall
no memory had he

"you barely struggled"
no pain nor pleasure to recall
her naked body snuggled
"we did it up against a wall

and more than once"
how might she have known
with such utter certainty
who was he?  who was she?

"In Jerusalem,  near the time
of Christ's Crucifixion"
her smoke become aura sublime
etiolated her complexion

"you were my slave,  a young
Nubian, then"  he could not pretend
his body,  upon hers he flung
what mind might never comprehend

"I whipped you unmercifully then"
the burning cigarette poised 
betwixt their searing flesh
"you were my prize

a wonder to my eyes"
their bodies atangle now enmeshed
his thighs up her thighs
breath upon a breath

"it came as no surprise
when I was stoned to death"
he knew her in the moment's guise
beyond dimensions,  life aleph

he knew her beyond all lives
all lies,  all compromise
beyond all boundaries of flesh
beyond transcendent consciousness

she was he and he was she
they were all and they were one
they were neither and
they were none