1.
I voyaged between the Scylla & Charybdis of her breasts like a swift corsair, imagining the whip on straining backs & the sail bellying with wind.
I bent to kiss my reflection in her silver toenail polish.
It was 2:00 in the afternoon. I traveled her spine’s high ridge with the eyes of a newt, looking for a stream in which to molt.
The hard nuggets of her name slowly melted as I rolled them back & forth across the hollow left by my missing tooth.
“I love you,” I said, & just like Pinocchio, a wooden nose began to grow in the most embarrassing of places. And Lord help me, it was starting to drip.
2.
Don’t wake me, rooster.
Get back to your roost.
Hey shuttlecock, birdie,
look out for the net!
Just once, weathervane,
can’t you face into the storm?
3.
I learned all about couplings in the hardware store: the finer the threads, the better the grip. If you want a tight seal, you can wrap some sticky tape over the male end before screwing it in. Don’t try this at home.
4.
There’s a kind of fish that remains in coitus
for weeks. The male disintegrates
into the current: first fins & tail,
then head & body let go. All inessential
functions cease, & everything
atrophies except the rigid sex organs,
buried in the female for their entire length.
Ah, like a mystic yearning to dissolve
like a drop in the ocean of Godhead,
how I envy that fish!
5.
Janie’s got a gun – the only cock rock song I ever respected. In a world full of detachable instruments of power, it seems only fair that a woman should have one of her own. I remember seeing Tribe 8 – lesbian punk band from San Francisco, come all the way to Central Pennsylvania to play at the VFW – doing a song about gang-raping frat boys. The singer strapped on a dildo over her jeans and my bisexual friend Bill crawled up on stage & knelt in front of her, pledging his devotion in the most straightforward manner imaginable. It was, as they say, an object lesson.
6.
Stick
figure, weak thing, think
how many drink to make
you dull as a bull, or pop
Viagra to stop up all other
sensory inputs & funnel
a camel’s stamina through
the tunnel vision of your
needling eye, which, though
no pinhead, is still a mere
prick.
7.
Men get nostalgic: we will never again piss
the way we could when we were ten
& knew nothing but basic arithmetic.
Even now, when we pee, for a few moments
we can return to that state of sexless innumeracy,
can be almost as present in our skins as animals.
We pee, & our minds stop wandering for as long
as it takes to subtract a little of that ocean
that passes through our male & female bodies
every day of our lives.
Then the flow turns into a trickle, & a quick,
involuntary shiver returns us to the algebra,
the infinitesimal calculus of Dick & Jane.
