Love

I. Blood

We want pictures of everything
Below your waist, and we want
Pictures of your waist. We can't
Talk right now, but we will text you
Into coitus. All thumbs. All bi
Coastal and discreet and masculine
And muscular. No whites. Every
Body a top. We got a career
To think about. No face. We got
Kids to remember. No one over 29.
No one under 30. Our exes hurt us
Into hurting them. Disease free. No
Drugs. We like to get high with
The right person. You
Got a girl? Bring your boy.

The work has been going forward with the greatest difficulty, chiefly because I cannot concentrate. I have no feeling about whether what I am writing is good or bad, and the whole business is totally without excitement and pleasure for me. And I am sure I know the reason. It’ s that I can’ t stand leaving unresolved my situation with Pat. I hear from her fairly frequently, asking when I plan to come back, and she knows that I am supposed to appear at the poetry reading in the middle of January. It is not mainly loneliness I feel, though I feel it; but I have been lonely before.

My dear, your eyes are weary;
Rest them a little while.
Assume the languid posture
Of pleasure mixed with guile.
Outside the talkative fountain
Continues night and day
Repeating my warm passion
In whatever it has to say.

Two of them
with chests like blond silk
cornsilk hair
stalled in traffic
in the awful heat
they smiled

were they messengers
delivering through the open window
promises or lies or invitations?

Boys are everywhere
at noon they glide
between parched cars
bare broad shoulders
color of chestnut colts

in the poison dusk
they catch falling stars
in their silly mouths
for girls, for each other
their teeth gleam reflections
off blue rayon

The man who told me about war
said, it's the only thing
that keeps us busy.
I thought of your fingers
on my back
counting the vertebrae
one by one.

The only thing?

She sat on his lap for hours
pressed his face to her
large pink breasts her hands
moved through his hair
like fond snakes

she gave him curls, cleft
hooves beneath the flesh
marvellous flesh, and smooth shoulders

she taught him
how to use his tongue
to shape a heart
from a piece of ice.

Because I must walk
through the eye-shaped
shadows cast by these
curved gold leaves thick
atop each constructed
palm tree, past displays
of silk scarves, lit
silhouettes of blue-bottled
perfume — because
I grip, as though for the first
time, a paper bag
of french fries from McDonald's,
and lick, from each fingertip,

i.

In a courtyard, in these stacks of chairs
before the empty stage — near are
we Lord, near and graspable. Lord,
accept these humble offerings:

stacks of biscuits wrapped in cellophane,
stacks of bone in glass: thighbone,
spine. Stacks of white saucers, porcelain
circles into which stacks of lip-worn

If there is a word in the lexicon of love,
it will not declare itself.
The nature of words is to fail
men who fall in love with men.

It will not declare itself,
the perfect word. Boyfriend seems ridiculous:
men who fall in love with men
deserve something a bit more formal.

The perfect word? Boyfriend? Ridiculous.
But partner is... businesslike —
we deserve something a bit less formal,
much more in love with love.