The Art of Fucking

Do you see
lines, points, and graph theory,
or
do you wrinkle the corner of a pillow
on your couch and curse the propensity
to insist the lights be turned off.
Confined to a time of day.
Manufacture anything
while you're at it.
Laugh over breakfast:
a lime and crackers and a plastic stripped square
of cheese.  Cigarette out
in a sneaker sole.  Blame it on the night.
Never trust an over eager high five.
Feel free
to shift little things in their apartment
30 inches to the left or right
while they are asleep.

January Kiss

Home from Emma's birthday party
we stayed long enough to make the train schedule
in time.  Stopped off at the drug store,
do they still call them that,
to make up costumes and you went as a box:
packing tape on every seam.
I went as bargain bin socks.
"Last minute idea," we agreed,
was too easy.

The debate on table games ran long,
my mind drifts over the ease of frat house logic
and quarters broached and shot down
before the "wart" left my mouth
to make "quarters".
A window glance
to remind we are 29 floors up
and it is a one way ride
to the sidewalk.

A beat to glance at the telescope's
empty space.  "Why don't they have one?"

Undressed and too dressed to fuck.
Oh, they'll break up soon.  She's on a tour.
Not a "last hurrah!" sort of thing,
but he did say some weird shit
while we played Connect Four before she
disappeared for half of an hour.

Breathing in your fresh toothpaste:
"let's touch eyeballs."
The old joke turns and hiccoughs.
Let's touch eyeballs.
Noses mash while lips rest and
breaths from inside your wings
come to rest in my chest.

Eyelash tickle and flinch and wince.
"I'm tired too."  Agree that folks should learn
to dance more often.
Your phone is on the kitchen counter,
not the L line's seat.
Pajamas.  Mine is in the freezer.
How else will I remember
to put ice cubes in my water come morning.

Breathing in, noses eyelashes apart.
I love you.  I envy you your friends.
Let's see them again.  Breath in.  Breath out.
Whisper.  Listen to your lungs
like a neighbor sex offender and warm
my insides by your bellows, feeding a fire.

"Let's go out tonight."
Your quiet heart.  Your memories.
Your Emma.  Your party.
Our confetti, our dance.  Our argument
parting ways to work and
I thought you had fun too.
I'm sorry.

Lighter spark.
Gray tendril licks the sky blanketed in stars.
I'm glad you can sleep.
Old friends and music and table games.
I miss you already, tamping out a cigarette
on a stairwell bolted to the side of building.
Come morning
you will not miss me.

Androids Dream

Wake up.  Please wake up.
Nuzzle the grille.  Lick the left sideview mirror.
Then lick the right.
With gloved fingertips
nick the icicles from fenders.
What's wrong?  Please talk to me.
Fire.  Remember that night beneath a silver dollar moon
when we bombed all the way to Tarentum
humming to 94.5 FM and the disc jockey said
next Saturday would be a great day
to watch the Perseid meteor shower
if we could get to a location
without light pollution?
It snowed on the way back home and
it was dark enough to expect
a night whale to thrust
four lanes of silt headlit flaked blacktop &
send us into a flock of barrels
like a silver trimmed, rust fendered, bowling ball.
Please wake up.
Help is on the way.




                I love you.