It needs to be said:

what you see in the mirror,
or in your lover’s face,
are functions – nothing but functions

To call this aggregation of purposes
appearance
is merely a glib, careless confusion of language

Granted, you may lapse
into such a romanticizing
of a heap of entrails
that evolution has thrown together
in an attempt by the cosmos
to get a hold of itself,
by that cumbersome detour
which wise men,
already in a dim past, characterized
as falsely copied
by declaring
that man was intended
as the image of a god,
along that contorted turn
which presupposes the creature’s fleshy functions,
so intricately multifaceted,
clad in the camouflage
of a beautifying skin-costume,
harboring a profusion of hiss & gurgle,
creamy blood & bitter hormones,
sex drives & mechanical acquisitiveness;
desperate constructions
of hopeless stellar urges;
the elements’ pursuit of an empty non-being
in a transparent sketching,
forever withholding the answer

and my fingers are sun-warm snakes
that slither
from long shirt sleeves,
glinting with noble cufflinks;
the marks of honor restrained, appropriate,
hardly surprising