Desire

I’ ve been here before, dreaming myself
backwards, among grappling hooks of light.

True to the seasons, I’ ve lived every word
spoken. Did I walk into someone’ s nightmare?

Hunger quivers on a fleshly string
at the crossroad. So deep is the lore,

there’ s only tomorrow today where darkness
splinters & wounds the bird of paradise.

On paths that plunge into primordial
green, Echo’ s laughter finds us together.

In the sweatshops of desire men think
if they don’ t die the moon won’ t rise.

I was sitting in Old Town Square
with tourists and birds and I was reading
Foucault, how “he who is subjected
to a field of visibility... becomes
the principle of his own subjection”
and all around me the beautiful
Czechoslovakian boys moved through the first
day of spring like perennially
visible inmates in the opening credits
of a prison porno. The sun reflected off
the glass and my table was an inscrutable
tower of light from which I peered, invisibly,
at the swan-graceful boys who seemed to skirr

The Magic of Numbers — 1

How strange it was to hear the furniture being moved around in the apartment upstairs!
I was twenty-six, and you were twenty-two.

The Magic of Numbers — 2

You asked me if I wanted to run, but I said no and walked on.
I was nineteen, and you were seven.

The Magic of Numbers — 3

Yes, but does X really like us?
We were both twenty-seven.

The process of through is ongoing.

The earth doesn’ t seem to move, but sometimes we fall
down against it and seem to briefly alight on its turning.

We were just going. I was just leaving,
which is to say, coming
elsewhere. Transient. I was going as I came, the words
move through my limbs, lungs, mouth, as I appear to sit

That she was not pretty she knew.

The flowers delivered into her hands post-concert by the young girl, pretty, would be acknowledged only. To display was to invite comparison.

Skilled at withholding, she withheld; it was a kind of giving. As when meditation is a kind of action,

a way of leaning into music the way one leans into winter wind, the way a mule leans into a harness,

the way a lover leans into the point of deepest penetration.

After a ship’ s prow cuts the water, the water rushes back twice as hard.

We enrolled at barbizon
Knowing full well
We’ d never look like
What was promised
Cue carol of the bells
Cue a demo on the casio
And the security of two-way
Escalators setting the speed
Those early mornings
In our mall school
The store’ s silver grills
Some mannequins left
Half-clothed
We’ d taunt them
With our imagined summers
In london paris rome
We weren’ t please and thank you
Walking with books on our heads
No we were going to devastate
Greek shipping heirs

it befalls us. an exchanged glance, reflective spasm.

How vainly men themselves amaze
To win the palm, the oak, or bays,
And their uncessant labours see
Crown’ d from some single herb or tree,
Whose short and narrow verged shade
Does prudently their toils upbraid;
While all flow’ rs and all trees do close
To weave the garlands of repose.

What is desire
But the hardwire argument given
To the mind’ s unstoppable mouth.

Inside the braincase, it’ s I
Want that fills every blank. And then the hand
Reaches for the pleasure

The plastic snake offers. Someone says, Yes,
It will all be fine in some future soon.
Definitely. I’ ve conjured a body

In the chair before me. Be yourself, I tell it.
Here memory makes you
Unchangeable: that shirt, those summer pants.

That beautiful face.
That tragic beautiful mind.
That mind’ s ravenous mouth

1
I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.

My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’ d from this soil, this air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.