Formulism in Ethics

First, sharply distinguish between inner and outer perception—
just take the edge and fold it on itself,
you know, changing states (sensible feelings).
Just as no real cube can exist, sorry, I mean
just as no real cube is a perfect cube—no dice rolls truly;
it’s unfair what we don’t have together.
Oh, this ouch does not contain an intention to communicate pain
an assertion like “this is good,” you know?
The most ideal and perfect:
You, most ideal and perfect,
this is apparent in our use of language
stretch that one out between us like a fillet.
Every ought is therefore an ought-to-be —
I like to think of that one, formally, as you and me
as a nice idea is a nice idea to hold on to.
Those edges, sharp but foldable
as ought becomes demand—I’m sorry,
we can see this illusion,
as an illusion,
a feeling-function,
I long for…(dot dot dot)
            attraction can be bound up with the body
the lived body, sorry,
the flux of actual experience of pleasure. What next, then?

Essay on Lust in Times of Crisis

Like riding Dante’s elevator the second floor, you know,
sometimes you press the wrong button but live with it
the way down to somewhere is the knowing—

yes, untie all the boats and forget our oars—

            hands too busy for paddling in this darkness

            between little suns under earth, dull light casted like body heat

It is hard to say, but there is no lion-faced way to say it:
I imagine if I love you hard enough, then you will leave who you have
and if I love you hard enough, then you will leave what you have

elevators, small talk, it’s what this can is made for, swallowing
            voices come back to use jumbled and heady

I can hear my blood clatter through me, and it is asking;
            when will you tell? And one day warming by a dull personal sun
            my heart will ‘pop’—explode from my chest, cover
            us in red petals—wind shaken rose marks on your neck.

Not locals at Hotel Alighieri we’re alone to make love our language
I don’t know how to speak anything else now / in our flirtation we have
forgotten we have our other tongues we have rummaging for parts we have all labelled in love

language we thought we wore like a waxed coat turn out to be our skins
put on for the deluge, something to float you home on steaming canals
now not knowing; the difference between nudity and covering or lust and hunger
            all rising, vapours untucked

they say they fucked a lot during air raids and I am sure they wanted to be
close to one another in the meat grinders all over
even those in the jungle or those in the wood cabinets where they keep the bodies

this is to be in want in the way of bullets and shells

there will be a time when we are stalked through the hotel by
a long man who clips when he walks like a badly made model
of a person from a videogame from before we met, imperfect routing

we have to ask for directions as every crisis is just being lost
amongst brambled walls / if we were brave bodied we
might scratch through smeared in bramble thorn marks
            little claims—a wild broken helixing on my forearms

and if I could have met you then, and unravelled through the wires
into your heart before / all the climbing downhill on loose rock, looking
for where the elevator shaft joins the rest of the hotel

I know there is no way to find our love it is a lost swan
amongst our texts moving between our bookcases
we have built a library of literary flirtation and there are pages

out on loan we want and thing we should return and the cost is obviously
more than you expect and we have been spending our time rubbing
out some of the old stamps—the meaning: there is a paddling beneath

and bad tempered hissing. Our swan ignores the sound of beating bodies
in the brambles and the twitch of nested glances from the reeds
because it is there as our love trying to be proper above the water,

clouds smudged on the reflection, a cloud amongst clouds
a stone amongst floss, a wold amongst fleeces swan squatting on
its own reflection—I know there is no shape

the love that we could take out on the street and agree
the shape elegant and nuzzled for our safety
it’s not exactly got teeth I know there is no way to have our love

although we feed it; slipping sprite strips of flesh beneath the tablecloths. It’s best not
            to encourage the beast to live off table-scraps
            but here we are with the swan’s prising beak at our knees.

and is it that cut that we like—the idea of being away from the world though fear
is it only fear that makes us want to break everything. Fleecing in my teeth
hair under nail / the way you would brush the teeth of a wolf that was yours.

fear doesn’t do civility. Fear says here, now, in the first dirt my loves
now in the dirt beneath the tree you pick for the best shelter from the sun.
It is possible to have love here, between shifts on the second floor.
red plade, longscale plate, underoak i feel the droplet that has hidden from the sun all day.
oh my there’s a place for us here
This is where we end up, running.
It would be simpler, we dream, to overnight us in red petals, outrunning delivery in hard boxes
to one day in, the sun, be opened up.