Pressured Speech

If I were to recall those burning pains, it shrinks from me

who provided the heat, how it was welded only to fracture

at that pivotal point where suspensions separate clean

at the base, loaded with oceans and drained of tours:

there remains no ivory coast unmolested and no fire

did us in, though I might blame it on the molten Earth

hewn from the poetic nonsense of an adolescent Reiter’s

coupled with your sweet spanning morsels, throbbing rebirth

that drips when you stroke it, pungent defiance that stings

as I sip it, sighs ring clear in the inebriated night freezing

without so much as a map, a compass, the cardinality-fiends

can’t so much as figure you without the lay of your seething

lands in the barrenness and brash, double-headed

relief and pain as pressure, cedes green ashes: vetted.