Whoever is empty
is hungry.

And all one can think about is food.

When a stranger offers
a loaf,

you think he is doing you a favor.

But no human deserves
to be starved at all.

Your words collect themselves.
Smoke of blank ink–
The blots form hands and feet.

Hello, Leviathan.

Dearest,
Drag me to ceramic land.

Sink your fangs on my knees.
Claw; curl my shoulders.
Scratch, raise my sleeves.
Force my hand to my face.

Leviathan, Leviathan,
you've failed.

You've prepared me for prayer.

A pickle’s tip is not enough for you.
Its going all in.
Taste is a side dish, too.

Savor the mooned lemons,
the skin’s sahara’s,
or the two parallel
ulurus.

Don’t forget your sin.

You take food off the table–
from your neighbours, too.
Your hunger could ****.

Take your worn-out maps–
old lessons of geography–
skim your finger
in between the iced caps.

Kiss the foreign,
the countries that don’t belong
to you.

Take it all, avariced ****.

***, to you,
is a selfish meal.

All this is flashy rhetoric about loving you.
I never had a selfless thought since I was born.
I am mercenary and self-seeking through and through:
I want God, you, all friends, merely to serve my turn.

Peace, re-assurance, pleasure, are the goals I seek,
I cannot crawl one inch outside my proper skin:
I talk of love --a scholar's parrot may talk Greek--
But, self-imprisoned, always end where I begin.

Only that now you have taught me (but how late) my lack.
I see the chasm. And everything you are was making
My heart into a bridge by which I might get back
From exile, and grow man. And now the bridge is breaking.

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains
You give me are more precious than all other gains.

Gentle dabs at the window, still.  
Maybe the clouds dip their pureness here,
purposely.

Even the greatest angel was envious–
this wickedness, these slopes and steeps–

This is humanity.