Long days of drought
until I had your absence bottled

and now I shiver
in my crooning majesty

inescapably alive to its scent.

Aware in the darker times
of your brutal hands

and my infant mouth
slurping, gagged, erased -

your absence remains,
beast-like, humming, there.

 

viut vut

I prize the late night crackle
of your voice on the telephone
without truly wanting you
but needing your speech at midnight.

I imagine you. My logic impeached
by the rattles of my heart
which flutters young, restless,
I have swam your shallow waters.

*

Somebody is upset. Reckless,
as a wrecking ball I hover
against the vanity cabinet
ready to spit my sympathies.

Yet I draw back, timid.
I am aware of my arrogance
in comparing my miserable trials
to her magnificent break-up.

££

 

There's no romance in his
logic. I've little time for
dialogue with bubbling hormones.
I barely have the patience
for empty rooms, for red cars
hungry in the night.

Science blinds him, he is
not an architect. I am
the anonymous champion in his
atheist arms.

In the absence of any faith
he has found me sucking
on my cigarettes, and thought,
"Yes, this'll do."

Resistant to any compass,
I explode under his geography.
My architecture is based
in his palms: empty rooms,
thieves, vandals, arson,
the struggle of a kiss.

Science blinds him, he is
not a sculptor. I remain
anonymous, championed in his
discoveries, his words.

My brain is immobile, scowls:
eight years old, I was a bucket.
Postcards flicker in the breeze,
he shuts the window.

"Poetry is desire, is a secret
tied up with adverbs," he says,
lighting my seventh cigarette.
"A eulogy, a smell, a glimpse."
Smoking and silent, I wait,
and bend to taste his thigh.

I have blinded him, he is
not a scientist. Held here
between my legs, unmoving,
his body is already a skeleton.

I exit the scene,
unable to talk in tongues,
unable to tie my shoelaces.
He remains, laced up in his logic.

 

black coffee dressing gown spew

Yours for the Night:

  except not,
although I enjoy
your possessive gaze,
those fingers mapping
my body, little soldiers,
and watching you commit
what you think is me
  to memory, irrevocable,

  (you learn, slowly,
    my noise, the engorged
        vowels spilling
    from my mouth,
        and consider it your
    January achievement)

  and receiving
the cruel comfort of
strange bruises, a shared
breath reclining
between us like smoke -
    young man, I'll miss
    that obnoxious set of teeth.