I wonder what I’d do
               with eight arms, two eyes
                              & too many ways to give
                                             myself away

                                             see, I only have one heart
                              & I know loving a woman can make you crawl
               out from under yourself, or forget
the kingdom that is your body

& what would you say, octopus?
               that you live knowing nobody
                              can touch you more
                                             than you do already

                                             that you can’t punch anything underwater
                              so you might as well drape yourself
                                             around it, bring it right up to your mouth
                              let each suction cup kiss what it finds

                                             that having this many hands
                              means to hold everything
               at once & nothing
to hold you back

that when you split
               you turn your blood
                              blue & pour
                                             out more ocean

                                             that you know heartbreak so well
                              you remove all your bones
so nothing can kill you.

I’ve told him that when I die,  
he may sleep with as many women as he likes,  
as long as he will vow to sob post-coitally.  

I tell him first as I double-u my legs  
over his torso, pull the blue duvet  
around the lump our bodies make, 
and I tell him straight-faced.  
We laugh about it occasionally, 
our little death joke. 

The Egyptians believed the heart  
is where the soul is –  
slit the bellies of the dead, remove the still organs,  
but leave the quiet heart between its ribs,  
wrapping the arms, torso, slick, clammy skin  
tight in white. They performed  
the Opening of the Mouth ceremony, touched  
the mummy on the lips, eyes and ears with a blade  
so he could speak and sense, live again in the hereafter. 

You wrap me, strip over strip of our linen bed sheets,  
listen to my voice, provide me with a blade.  
I plea for you to keep me inside  
so that when you stop breathing,  
your heart will weigh no more than a feather, 
and when what remains is only stillness, 
we can pull open our red centers,  
and watch a sacred ibis unfold itself into flight. 

And not just those disciples
whom he loved, and not just
his mother; for all creation

was his mother, if he shared
his cells with worms and ferns
and whales, silt and spiderweb,

with the very walls of his crypt.
Of all creation, only he slept,
the rest awake and rapt with grief

when love’s captain leapt
onto the cross, into an abyss
the weather hadn’t dreamt.

Hero mine the beloved,
cried snowflakes, cried the moons
of unknown planets, cried the thorns

in his garland, the nails bashed
through his bones, the spikes of dry grass
on the hillside, dotted with water

and with blood—real tears,
and not a trick of rain-light
blinked and blurred onto a tree

so that the tree seems wound
in gold. It was not wound
in gold or rain but in a rapture

of salt, the wood splintering
as he splintered when he wept
over Lazarus, over Jerusalem,

until his sorrow became his action,
his grief his victory—
until his tears became a rupture

in nature, all creation
discipled to his suffering
on the gilded gallows-tree,

the wood which broke beneath the weight
of love, though it had no ears to hear
him cry out, and no eyes to see.

This salt-stain spot
marks the place where men
lay down their heads,
back to the bench,

and hoist nothing
that need be lifted
but some burden they've chosen
this time: more reps,

more weight, the upward shove
of it leaving, collectively,
this sign of where we've been:
shroud-stain, negative

flashed onto the vinyl
where we push something
unyielding skyward,
gaining some power

at least over flesh,
which goads with desire,
and terrifies with frailty.
Who could say who's

added his heat to the nimbus
of our intent, here where
we make ourselves:
something difficult

lifted, pressed or curled,
Power over beauty,
power over power!
Though there's something more

tender, beneath our vanity,
our will to become objects
of desire: we sweat the mark
of our presence onto the cloth.

Here is some halo
the living made together.