the day after
one tipsy winter evening spent
making out in your car

I am crowded with disjunct sensations:

For instance, my back is killing me.
At my age, what I can do in the moment
limber, hungry,
leaves a bruise
(from the steering wheel, I figure)
And the tops of my thighs burn; and my left knee
from the emergency brake
which I ignored at the time.

a lingering sweetness,

to know you still could

do it, that way, you remembered --
without being asked.

Though it's been years. Like dreaming,
unfair, unavoidable. Or nearly.

in the suspension of belief
required
to justify betrayal.

You are left then,
the unfulfilled requests of
days now gone. And this
alone, this emptiness of history
would be sufficient unto shame...

the bruise, and the sweetness,
tell me I'm alive,
that some man somewhere can


balanced, alive alive-o
undone, unbound and unselfconscious
on his outstretched palm
fingers curled upward, inward,
while I thank my maker.

lost at sea

separated by a ruler's length of conscience
the repelling force of magnets face to face
a gap alive with light, and minute signals,
alive with atomies condensed in finite space

and when you're far away, temptation fills the void
the narrative unwinding, raveled skeins of days
brush harmlessly and fray and snap across the oars
shipped leaden to the bow, borne back by endless waves

the airy threads will still do up the mast
true north is only Heaven, compass-cracked
and love is only salt, is light and salt together
along the beam of motes that binds us, back to back

standing by part 2

consider the attention to orbit
and trajectory:
in any finite space, two people
in their patterns interact,
and pass through their clocks of days
like the mailman,
appearing on the doorstep, on the same page
always;
we circle and spin, towards and away
sometimes so carefully that I suppose
you'd call it
dancing.
Routine is intimacy.
If I look up or look away, it's just
my cue, the bell
of your attention or neglect.
Tempting though
to lean in once, skipping
off your atmosphere,
to watch the sparks.

standing by

sometimes, when you smile at me in a crowd
I pretend not to see you.
it's the dumbest thing. but I want you
all to myself, in those instants; so badly in fact
that I'd rather you didn't touch me at all.

when you smile in a way that's new to me,
I check the impulse to reach for it, hands outstretched --
to warm myself before you hungrily.

so shamefully familiar are your noises,
your expressions, that it's best
to turn away once in a while, to let you be.
no one really wants to be studied so closely.
x-rayed by love, anticipated,
surmised.

if i ignore you when you walk into the room,
please don't take it to heart;
all down the length of me I'm listening.

i'm standing by.