raw material for a pottery project

Thou shalt commit adultery—King James Bible, first edition 1611

not everyone is entitled to an opinion
if a stranger down some dark side road at noon
brushes my garment while passing I do not then grasp at him
declaring I wish now to pronounce upon the wedding
of your daughter...

I don't generally consider a handshake to be sex but there have been exceptions

the one-armed bodybuilder downtown sold the other for
the specialist steak market got enough to keep him in cerium oxide
for three months now says he is saving for the stem cells
they all say that every one of those slick amputees it is as though
an elephant god has waded from the perfumed dunes
squats upon the city flooding the whole damn airspace
with liquid miasma that sets locking in every human spirit
in rotten amber will be some future delicacy

they play this frequency designed to break loose the atomic structure
of construction materials used in shipbuilding and produce
high-tensile bonding across the entire field like a silent air-raid siren
shake loose everything human deep till the body melts down
hangs there on the skeleton guffawing forever with all doubt dissolved

back there in the trees you see it he gasps so earnest something watches
what you expect sunbeam they giggle at him

found myself running out naked eating bark
forming opinions
selling my limbs for gas and air

it will be like this: your hands around the wet neck
feeling it come loose and slip away

wandering home with filthy hands

little goddamn Jackie from the past hangs there from the balcony
with a broken back
committing suicide above the high street for shame
everyone watches lovestruck
as the thing shatters, still soft, unformed
never to be what it nearly was

dried up now no one even notices stepping over it
little face looking up frozen in invisible yeller shit

to be harvested for the sector delicatessens years later
by huge flightless men with nothing left but this

.