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Wash off, boy, those fears smeared like today's dust and this last year's rust
from the parts of you covering your once so potent natural
musk,
the robots gather like iron maidens at dusk,
sunshine playing from ivory teeth sparkling to iron tusks remarkable
but terrifying too,
such smashing power such,

and I'm terrified, boy, that from this terror I'm unable to protect you,
to keep the dogs of death from the loins where wet with canine breath
they take from me in cruel jest the one fool foolish enough
to love me back,
stand with me,
back to back,
cleft to cleft,
be brave and let's conquer let's,

find what lost courage is left leaping from cold heart precipice to cold breast
where below is expressed in fierce colors a heart possessed
with wild
squalor,
for days and days let's lay waste to what tyranny towers,
be brave, my love,
be brave,
find valor and thunder with me into legend into history into madness,
destined to be our love's confession the engine of the ending
and our final reckoning.

2016
ta

original photograph by Arlene Gottfried