grey white morning give me strength
give the breath that frees
from death
ice white snow. milk white glow
give the light of life
on the day after the day of Holy
innocents
on the day after the day after when we repent
and when we are born
strength of hibernation
be with me
strength of mother fur roll with me
power of forgetting be in me
all in my furs
all in my cave
jesus came to save
be sending us in
to the deepest of sleeps

i would rather have you than silver
i would rather have you than gold
i would rather have you than any of it
and love and praise and smiles
which is to say: i would rather have you then
bullshit

it is here in the wreck of the thirty ninth lost
love that i have found you
and that just tells you what i'm like cause really
you were finding me and
i want to make this my story
about how i found the ship and crashed
the ship and wrecked the ship
how after all the shit and the
crying we plowed into the side of the church
and then shakign it off we left
with a locust and some honey a
crucifix and a book of mormon
and we went to live in a cave
and in the midst of this
turning my back on the
fire and brimstone falling from the sky
stopping my mouth from another lie
i blinked
and there you were

i have no time
but you have begged "in my time"
i make my plans, but you offer your hand
living with my views, you lend me your eyes
and we begin again
everything is so mundane when left up to me
and i loathe dependency
but you pray depend on me
and out of my poverty has come all
my liberty
you are always with me
when i choose to choose nothing else
because of who you are you wished
on a star
and came to live in a stable
and sit at my table

i want something new
that is i suspect something new
i know now we are on the advent of it
i want to be invaded
i am preparing for the entry
i want to be bent over and fucked by it
undone by it
duck walked by it
and i know with the stiffness
of my cock
that its coming

i have as many lovers as i did this time
last year
and that is none
i have not nearly as many
fears and more friends
i have, i have
i have an addiction to progress
and acquisition
i still believe that A can lead to B
i still can't believe, though I have seen it
how we invent connections
and how its really happening altogether
and rather happening all over again
so that you'll be lost if you think it
happened in Bethlehem
in another millenium
here, down the street from the grocery store
and the tired, smiling cashier
its happ'ning all over again

the orange candle
the handle on the coffee cup and
the shine of the tea pot, of the glossiness
of the mince pie is telling me something
i want to hear very great things
at jesus' birth i need bright things
and i ought to no better by now because
i have stopped going to church since
every year at church, at midnight
my sight is burned by lanterns and
candles and my ears hurt by trumpets and
i think... no
no... you wouldn't do that for a baby
a baby needs quiet and so i
a baby's only message is a breast
and mine is one burning orange candle
and a steaming slice of mince pie

before christmas

you walking monkeys over there
are not so far from bears as you would like to believe
nor am i, poor hairless chimp
now is the time to climb into our caves, candles,
little little
fires burning
the yearning, to be wrapped in furs and
frus of God and press our ears to the furry chest of the mother
there is a reason the son of man was was born in a cave
a cave like tomb
a cave like a tomb
a cave like the cavern where bruins brood
because, because he knew Brigid was there
her air is just another word for fire
and retiring is just another word for rebirth

no, it isn't the sex
for your mother had sex and look how
your father turned out
no it isn't the simply orgasm
for you gasp and jism every morning
in the shower
and certainly not bed and all the strange
places, but rather the excitement or--what is more
that like those sexy whores on screen--you
will be excited
you will be interesting
you will be fantastic and arresting
but the problem with porn
the problem for you is, well,
you see...
and the problem with me is i am always
taking it just one step too far
but you will always be yourself
and you and me
we... well
you can only be yourself,
and that's your problem

CHRISTMAS POEM THREE

i am practicing and practicng in the hopes that lines
i write about this season of your birth
-which by amazing coincidence is the seaon of my own--
will get a little better
and perhaps by better i mean rhyme more, flow more
and perhaps, no dcertainly, i think the best way you
see, to make poetry
turn out is
honesty
and honestly i start to feel that being there is
half of what redemption is, and actually tasting your
coffee is salvation
savoring this moment, this taste this fascination
and i wonder, a little bit, if part of the
darkness the son of man delivers us from is
simply the realization of a hey
and a hi and an ohhh...
you see, the dark last only a little bit
and things aren't quite as bad as you think

in the cave two

christmas is a pagan thing
teach me to sing the songs i do not
understand
teach me to light the candles, different
colors, that command
the spirits of frost and call the ancient gods
Mary is an ancient mother in a cave
and all the gods were in New Grange watching
her give birth to save us from our
winter time madness
at the creche, at the candle and the yule log
neath the mantle all the gods lean in
and warm their hands
to adore him
so Christmas is a pagan thing
with wine and mistletoe
two golds rings
partridges and pear trees

in the cave one

tonight, today, this afternoon
like afternoons for twn years past on this night
we light the candle
on this end of day we sing the songs
the son of God is eternal
and so we should not wonder that this feast took place long before
he was born
he was born in a cave and long ago thats
where we came
to await a pinprick of light, lacing to the stone
covered in whirls
and he was rolled the stone away
on another day
and revealed worlds and revelations
with hesitation i come to this ancient ancient
feast that knows no gospel but itself
and has no hope but the basic lust for spring

just remember, my dear...
you're in the army now!

MEDITATIONS ON SUCKING AND FUCKING

i wanted to do it for you
and you wanted to do it for me
and so we gave to each other
and we shut the door because
in this selfish world nobody
understands
and you put your hand on me, so gentle
and even when youre fierce there's love in you
even when you take the power you take it
cause i give it and i give it cause i love
you and i love you
cause you love me
andso i open to you
and am filled by you
with a bruising
stretching fullness
and i love this giving
and receiving




you gave this to me
anyone talking about dignity
does not understand the humility required
to lay down for your love and longing
and you on your knees
were a very great king
as you gave this to me
and you took me in and then
i shuddered and spilled
the secrets you desired

BALLS

oh
for his balls
and for the fall on your
knees glory
and the end of stories about
keeping for fucking dignity
get on your knees
and go down
and i have found
the length and girth of
your cock is the trip back and forth
to heaven
and every ounce of vanity and leaven
leaves
when i'm on my knees
with you to the back of my throat
and that's all he wrote
shit, yeah...
that's all he wrote

ASS

ah, for his well turned ass
ah, for the touch of it, the feel
of it
and even for the smell of it
for the reality and
sweatality
and the living momentry
of the body
for the juice of the living
and the living of the flesh
and oh for the striving
and oh for the loving
and after the loving
the gentle admiration
the tastification
and strokination
of the back of my hand
against that round and firm
well turned ass

you have surrounded me in
doing
in blossoming, blooming
and i have made room for flowers
now that i've thrown out the trash
and the act of living is the act o
sorting and the act of sorting is the act
of knowing what is good
and what is not
and looking over garbage to take out
the gold
this is the goal
and the goal is a prayer
and the prayer in the life
and the life is the strength
the strength of beauty...

i come like a bird
more than like a lion and
i hope that maybe there is some
sense in me now
maybe there is a bit of the owl
after all my night flying
god knows i've spent so much time on
catching rodents
but, rather,
to be a blue bird, light and
flitting to you
coming on a wind
a wind that is your hand
that is your breath
that is your longing
knowing it is your gift
and not my strength
that has brought us here.

not yet with the fire i wished for in
days long past,
but rather with a gentleness, freshly
out of sleep i come to you
and not always with a passion that
could burn down hell
but with a resilience
through the samenesses of life
to the blamelessness
and the blessedness
hidden in every day
i come
every day to
you

to be given this gift of loving and
living with all the imperfections,
with all the
how things have not turned out the way they should
or how they should is to be turned
out with nails in wrists
and imperfections and how the bad sight
in one eye
and the limp in the leg and the words
said to you that
broke your heart are all a part of it
and we are all, crawling through the passion
and when we come down these narrows roads
with veronica weeping
when the daughters of jerusalem
lead us out into the city
out of its limits with the thieves
and whores
we will not see a crucifixion
but a transition
we will see a beautiful naked man
and then
we will see an infant in a virgin's arms

i can hardly help doing things the
same way i've always done before i am
always saying i have got to change and
yet i keep on coming back here, keep chasing
deer i've never caught in the same
goddamn circles i've gone before
and the worse part is you're no better
and the worst part is coming this short a
distance i see how far i've come
and the good part is the light
and the good part is that, finally,
i am hearing your little voice
shout so loud

rihht now you have promised me a childhood
i never had on this earth
an innocense that even when i was one day
old i never felt
today at the beginning
counting days till the drummer boy comes
hours till the star arises over bethlehem
look now and realize you are remembering
something
that was not for him. but for you
that it is not time to be born in the stable
it is not time to be born of the virgin
it is not time to become so small you
fit inside a star
it is time to travel on the wind
taken so far
that you are the child
in the manger
the child you have never been

the first day of advent
when the sky is white grey and trees blackeing
i come out of the warm bed hoping
and it has been such a long time since
hope
and i remember the days of despair and even
last night was a day of despairs and obsessions
at the time of the purple candle come into
childhood at the time of the blue and white
to let these scars all go
do not be afraid to be the child
at this time
against my will
i feel hope
and now it is not vain because
in the days long past i stood and watched
the dead root grow

we are bad
we are stifled, we are unable
when it comes to thanksgiving
we are all stuffed with shit and
saffron, stupid turkeys
sitting round the table, as we fold
our hands aunt mable says: give than ks
and how we resent this
and what is more
we say what you never hear from the poor
in warm clothes and heated homes
shielded from the storm that's blown
half the world we way
we say:

i'd be more grateful
if i had something to be thankful for

take this body
in the body
touch your flesh to my flesh
and the taste of snow and the
watermelon on your tongue
and let go

let go of all anger
take my body and
love my body
and i'll love yours
take this bread
and this wine and this
time don't be afraid to offer
yourself to the whole world
all the world is in you
all the world

if we could see ourselves
as we are
glittering, ancient
large as stars
then would this make humility?
and could we,
at last, say:
it ain't all about me
no...
it ain't all about me

and when will i be...?
and when will i be...?
and when will i get justified
get my desserts
and when will i get
what's coming to me?
when will i get some sympathy
some reciprocity?
and when will do?
finally do?
when will you do what i
think you should do
and serve me?
and serve
and
when will i learn
could i just learn
stop the burn
of greed
and why do i need and always need
and when will i learn to
serve?

no
things are not getting colder
no things are not freezingco
they are just slowing because
when we're all growing older
no one is learning anything
and courage is activated when
we get up to go away
and courage is activated in
wars across the sea
and when you want to type
a trasny letter to me
knowing i won't ever see your face
but for every day life
between fear and delusion
we're all stuck doing nothing
in this icy confusion

i have, by great effort
made the decision to move onto the outskirts
of fear
sometimes it is dull here
sometimes there is the mouse crawling up my leg
and sometimes it is as if i never seem to wake up
i thought that when the enlightenment came
i would never be tired again
i heard of a woman who for the love of god
gave her life and on a train to a death camp
lay on her back in utter delight
gazing at the stars and feeling
jesus
but right now what if feel is tired
and what i'd like is cold water for these
red eyes
and an hour more of sleep
in the bed thats already taken too many hours away

SCOT

By the striking of a match and a candle
flame
he saw the glowing eyes of the boy he loved.

He saw the length of a body compact
and small like his. Then he dispensed with the light
and gave up looking for touching,

and touching

for the linking of bodies,
and they were like that
the whole night…

russ

if i could do one thing i would see Russ again
And how would you not see someone again if the
someone's name was Russ? and i would ruffle my
hands through his hair, stroke his soft shoulder
length hair that smelled of shampoo and of new
washing and i would put the back of my hand to
the front of his cheeks, ah, and then
i would kiss him
Russ, i should have kissed you!
if i hadn't missed it we would have linked hands
real quiet and found a bed in that large house
or gone back to your small house and spent the hours
touching, touching, minutes undressing
shut the door and out of sight,
say goodbye, turn out the light
twisted like serpents or like
servants of One Love,
twisting our twain flesh all that night.

here in america
our dreams are too big for our
houses
and everyone here needs new houses
and the lousy part is
prophets have played
the message that thinking
is doing
and wishing is willing
and everything and everyone
is interesting
and you've got a book in you
and i've got a book in
me
and we are all so persecuted
and unappreciated
everything we do ends in the question:
what will you do with that? and we are
devoted to planning out the futures
that will never happen
keeping rules that no god ever made and so
tired and afraid,carving pigeonholes and boxes
like superstitious circles we climb right in
and hide
then at the end of another
pissed off night we drive into our
garages feeling smug
and justified

if you can't say anything nice
its probably true
you'd better close your eyes to change
the view
and i'm sitting her smoking cigarettes
and its dark on friday and i don't get
why i believed
truly, deeply,
that all this writing would be
my transformation
and all of this weekly, daily
self examination
and after i have forced myself
lighting candles, doing
prayer and meditation there comes
his voice:
hush
take things more lightly

the last hunger after the final sleep
on the edge of three am, on the lip of
four in the morning
things are clearer now
love is all that mattered
friend, in the truest since of
the word
is all that really mattered
i went too the closet today and
locked myself in there
i said boo seven times waiting
for the terror to come
but it was too tired to come
so i suppose after thirty two years
sitting here
drinking a beer
i've overcome
something

at the mormon church
while the dumb young
brother preached the sermon
i looked at him and he was so
beautiful i thought
this is the way to simonize me
how many folks endured how
many sermons for a look
at a beautiful woman
or a bull built man
and a fire and brimstone
fantasy about a heavenly
tumble?

jesus loves me
but not like you believe
last night he came through my window like a teenaged boy
and he toyed with the lock, it didn't matter
while the preacher was murmuring something from the clock radio
he undressed and shimmied out of his black underwear
and hopped from here
to there
into the bed
and we started laughing
and then we started fucking
and the things we did under those sheets
i think you've never sermonized
i think you don't know how God harmonizes
and every aspect of our dancing
becomes loving
and giving and
taking
and spilling of seed
and the loosing of fear
with him
through him
in him
all through the night
until there is day
and the orgasm shout while he holds out hips
out
hallelujah!

what if in this last incarnation
you came to me a sweet young man
with the sun in his hand
and in his flesh, brown flesh,
gold flesh
flesh i'd want to hold flesh
and you laid down beside me and
said take of meand then you took
of mesliding the white cloth
from the length of your body
and i loved your body cause
you gave me your body
and you took me
and i knew you
and i knew no fear
and when we were finished
when all passion spent
you got up and went to the shower
and i knew what you were waiting for
for me to say
take me
as you took me then
take me again and i will follow
and you came out
all brown and gold, laughing
and me dickheavy with longing
water and myrhh dripped from your locks
and for my sake you redressed slowly
slowly cloth over round buttocks
and sausage cock
over the chest
the brown breast
and then i dressed to follow
you showered me
cleansed me in the myrhh of your hair
and there, Dark Lover
i knew Christ the Lord
the Lover
the Fool, the Fucker

THIS FREEZING TIME

there has been a steady knocking long after midnight
long after one, and you are standing there at the door
dejected, desperate, hair in your face all nailbitten
and you say, because you know me
don't make me stand here all dejected, desperate,
nailbitten
i know how you love to humiliate me
please, don't make me beg
and when did god make you something more than human that at this
freezing time you don't need me
the way i need you?
and i viewed me the way you must've for one second
every bit of trust in our love, and in our need
that made me this sarcastic thing and then
you standing there thin, worn to absolute
man humanity and i let you in
and i let you in
come
let's not play games another moment
and lets not misinterpret the word virgin
i heard one crying in the wilderness
and it was the groan from your mouth
as i pressed my hand to your hair
and maybe it was from my mouth too
and maybe past pride, in giving up
and giving in
to each other
there
is the beginning of salvation?

the longing

o come ye of twisting, waking bodies
and longing two a.m. flesh and
i will share with you restlessness
i had no place to lay my head and no hole
for my fox so i know how it is
now that you have none for yours
and the longing that longs in the
icy night cannot be cured by
flying away
the only cure for that
is the trusting
the only thing you need
in not enlightenment
not even love
but the thrusting when you roll
around, dreaming down in half sleep
and i know
for i grow
in the cold space
of the longing.

THE NEW HAPPINESS

you had better get yourself ready for
te new happiness
and the new happiness is the happiness
that comes living in this world
when the word for resurrection has
unraveled on your lips
and bethlehem lies just east
of your bathroom
the happiness of this world is
when contentment comes in knowing
that this thing that is almost
almost perfect
this day almost, almost
complete
this peace tinged with touches
of fear has hope seeeds
and joy seeds
when you look into your wrinlking mortal
flesh and by some godly gift
can see eternity
when tomorror and tomorrow and the terror
of tomorrow fold up ad roll up
into a ball and burn up to be replaced
by eternity
then you will see the new happiness
that rises like mushroom from the
matter of this world

what we should set ourselves on
now
is traveling without moving
and on learning how to rest
all this week i tested the limit til
my body's strength was gone and then
like Merlin tangled in the branches of
his tree i awoke
after a thousand years, blinking
in drowsing sunlight
and at the end of this pot of coffee i know
the world is alright
though not all of it
and not right now
and in bed last night
i dreamnt of my lover
though i've never met him

afraid
that i'd gone too wild
gone too wild and left you
i climbed into bed at three in the morning
with a longing body and a butterfly brain and heard,
on the BBC, a southern baptist
going on about a you i did not
believe in
and a you in whom i could take no
interest
and then i knew the dancing on the
edge is the only place to be
and you are still sitting on a volcano
in the desert telling
commanding strange folk:
come out to me

sometimes i find myself letting go
which is not quite accurate for in so
saying i'm placing action where it is not
what i should not say, no what i should say
is sometimes i feel things slipping off
sometimes i feel you falling from my heart
and i never knew how heavy you were
or sometimes the darkness is draining
away and i never new how dim even my days
were and in the bathtub comes
a true baptism that is only for those
blessed ones who no
longer frequent churches
longing to find there gods that they cannot
and in that blessing
water dripping
i know i'm letting go
of you

now in the place past forgiveness
and out of the houses of pretension
into the love and the desire
for that which is
i find you when i find
myself unbridled
this explosion, and this
intrusion was all i ever needed
and after all the posturing
and all the pride
i think it;s really
all there ever
was

i don't need love
or at least not right
now, or at least this is the love
that i need, and i need you to
witness this giving in this
opening
i'm not hoping anymore
we've arrived at the much simpler
place of exploding

here in the pure la
we are nakedly free of deception
there we won't show our
wares unless we're willing to
share them
and you can drink from
my bowls and my cups and my
wine filled ladles for free
and dignity is a word we
won't mistake for fear
the word is desire
unashamed
how i want the pure land
where you love me openly
and there is nothing but
the honesty of our bodies
and in godly lust
we hide no holy
fires

for so long what has past as holiness
and goodness and wisdom is only fear
i dreamed the other night
and still dream some time
that you came to the house big
bodied, thick cocked, liked you once did
but when i got there you were gone
like you are gone now
hurt by how unloved you were when you
you thought you deserved it
sorrowful that lust was not enough
i remember you bent on my bed all
doggy style and all the while
me, wondering what to do with you
and now i am wondering what to do
with all this lack of beauty
and with all this end of honesty
wrapped in shyness
wrapped in coyness
wrapped in a bomb that would better be
stripped naked and laid in the darkness
of some back bedroom
and if lies and starched out modesties,
the infamies of false virginity are the
sickness
then is sucking
and love and fucking at two a.m
the cure?

teach me, saint peter
of the golden hair and willing mouth
take from me
the longing for dignity
and all we be well
i am so hemmed in by responsibility
i am waiting here for a prize
for being so good and so sleepless
and so juiceless and over
and over again i've told myself
no prize is coming
so let me give in
let me give out and lay
down and love
and not in the abstract by under
the contract of fire
let me lust and burn and
learn to suck anything from everything
the desire raising every hair
and fueling all my capillaries
is the angel, not the demon

once we had crossed over that first wonder
and entered into transgression there
is not turning back and you can
call yourself what you will
and i will do the same,
but the name of this entry is
queer and here is the walking
away from the straight to the bent
to all that underwent or undergo
the flow into being broken
into light of being
opened

somewhere
around here
there has got to be a cigarette
and a bed
and a bit of holy water
and i have got to find my way to a place
where i can just lay down
for a bit
after kicking around waiting
for this and that to happen
i have got to find a place with some bacon
and eggs and a little bit of peace
and maybe a sensible musclebound lover
with pretty eyes or...
no
just julian or norwich, a bed
a cigarette and
some sleep

all night i looked for you and now i am drowsy
with the not seeing
all these days i waited for you and you
having not come
i am leaving and yes,
i'll tell the truth,
i looked for you too, not just waited
just waiting around isn't like me
and like you always do, you never showed up
and i'm not blaming you
no
i'm just leaving.

see
i want two things
together or apart
what i don't want is wasted time or silly men,
i'm too old and too tired to be anyone's nurse
maid or entertain a fantasy
i just want to get the job done
i just want to eat my cereal and love you
and the gas man sends an envelope reporting
that who knows when a furnace can break,
how i should take this ten dollar increase
on my bill, insurance for the nightmare
than may never happen
and all advertisements are nightmares
that may never happen
and all evangelists are ads for nightmares
that will never happen and depression
pills for original sins that are not true
my original sin is the love of kissing
other men
and what i want is:
remember the two things i
want?--that's how we started--
and i said: what i want
is my boyfriend
when will he come?
what i want is my boyfriend
or a good stiff fuck and sweaty palm
clenching passion
or both
and here is the sin...
that i know the first is useless without the second
but the creaking bed is always welcome!

right now i'm just sitting here
i'm just at something like peace
i just got finished reading some bad
british poetry
some metaphysical shit from the 1600;s.
back then everybody loved jesus,
they loved him so much that if you didn't
love him too,
in the right way, they'd chop off your fingers
or set your head on fire
like them i'd like to think
that most of the time i love you
but what i require is that the dead
in man in me be risen
and that the sad things sitting all
around me stand up and dance
and that my cigarettes be good and i be
embued with patience and charity
when they are not

you are up with a cigarette and a silver grey
sunrise next to the weathered crucifix and it
sits like an itch or like a tightness, like
a bad pair of jeans all around you
no, it sits in the hard place between the eyes
where it always is
the voice that is not, the cup that is not
full
the the fool that will never have enough
who wonders how this could be enough for anyone
desire and discontent and then
you know this is what sent you here
that you don't understand how so many people could be
settle for so little
you dont mean to mettle and you don't mean
love with so little, or rejoice in so little
that's simplicity
what you see is everyone selling
a birthright for a pot of beans
and because beans is all the world has
to proffer
you turn your back from the offer, light a cigarette
and drink your coffee, you unshaven, at a time this early,
eyes a little hazy
and that's why they call you crazy

come here
and burn me down
all these things on the ground around
my feet are useless
come here
and quench my fears with the
sweat of your tears
and the rain of your jizm
all of the isms and thoughts
and writings and willings
that one idea might be only
truth never did a thing for me
but this weakness
and the thickness and
this meekness begins to do
it
if i could begin to kiss it
if i could begin to love this ignorance
like i love you
like a lover
or a candle flame or
this whispered name of earth
and if i could just stay away from people
writing and talking about nothing
and claiming they knew something well
then maybe this could be the start
of life

YOU

thick cocked, wet lip,
full hipped,
hairy, smooth, cocoa,
dusky brown and
smooth chocolate-white,
you,
with your breath in my ear
and tongue to my flesh,
are among the lovers i
have known:
bless your time
and mine

everything has a purpose a place
a number, name and proper function
and all these greedy eyes the moment
we enter the world wish to to put us in our place
some good upstanding people think the reason we are
here, you are here, we are here, is to be--as some
fool used to say to me--a productive member of soc...
well, you know, why repeat that?
ah, teach me to know bullshit
ah, jesus, teach me to know crap
teach me the art of being useless
gradually mat up my hair and roll up self esteem
till i cease to be proper
having prayed so long for my vocation
please it thou to give me vacation from such self important
words and
at last
make me the beauty of possessing not a single good
and proper function

you are so impractical
teach me---who wish to be reasonable
the use of impracticality
free me from bracketality and the putting on
of boxes
the foxes have holes and but you are
a bird and you take the air
and i am with you there
if you will have me
though my wings are young and i am full of fear
i hear you speaking in the garden at night to
nicodemus and whispering with the breath of
your spirit that sons of your spirit are like
wind and when you come from me
teach me to fly from practicality

real flesh of flesh and real body
at four o clock in the morning when
stomach growling i woke up
and then saw the ghost of a mouse flit through
and turned this machine on
you were there, and you took off
your clothes for me
and you orgasmed for me
and then you disappeared
and you are always showing off yourself
and always nobody wants you you are one
permanent, desperate exhibition
and growling in my stomach, grinding
in my groin is the lust
to be an exhibitionist too
you are much too shy and much too forward
and a little too desperate and will get
on your knees for anything and take any
eucharist into you mouth
this side of heaven anything that is godly
is incarnate and oh my god what an agony
is our flesh and how
hard it is to love
and how difficul'y we live with rats and shadows
and you, man,
know it is not easy learning to be
human

now i know that we will lay down
face down
on the floor at two o clock in the morning
to relieve our loneliness
now i know we will pay money, do time to smack
smack lovers, talk smack
to make a brief connection
now i know that you will keep on sending out
hellos into the ether
hoping for one hello back
and you will screw it all up
and do it again
and then, i know why hardhearted people
wound up in stupid wound each
each other
and how one word, placed in two parts
of a sentence becomes another
and now i know
that what we all need
is to be a little kinder
to each other

peace around us
peace over us
peace under our feet

peace so near us

because the lord is my shepherd
and he is yours too

or she

and that is the rod that leads you
with a kiss, in and out, out and in
in pleasure

all the days of your life...

because nothing in being human was beyond her, saint catherine
who they say lived by starvation drank a bowl of human pus and when i told my atheist lover who hated people as much as he hated god he frowned in discuss
and the bible tells us that for the love of it god became a man
and then there is that other catherine, crushed in a spike wheel a communion of her blood all over alexandria
and saint augusting sewed his seed all over hippo and milan and i guess what i am getting at
as i cease to be the plaster virgin
what i am getting at, as i tire of these versions of holiness where
lying, lying bastards pretend
to be so thin and cold that butter wouldn't melt in their mouths
is that the mouth of sanctity is being human and the heart of holiness
is not golden but sweating flesh and doubt and tears
and longing, throbbing
and the only place, the only space for being wooden
is in the firm and secret place between your legs

well... oh, hell
let's see
i am much healthier than i was yesterday
and i am not as frightened as i used to be
i am not as angry as i used to be
i don't know if i'm as fragile as i was
i am frightened of depression
and the blackbirds again
and i'm still scared of being scared
so in the end i am a little
very little better off than i
was before
but that bit's better
its so much better

poem dedicated to a golden boy who spent all night on his cellphone trawling for sex



hot and fine
and sexy and poor and just arrived
here at three in the morning there you go
trawling for a touch, begging on your cell phone
dialing up numbers so that the tightness in you
can be intruded and the desire in you can be slaked
in you, naked, i see a mirror of myself
don't be ashamed of this desire
don't be ashamed of this need,
this want
this moment where you throw your hands open
and your body back
and give yourself to the desire
if not the fulfillment of the flesh
they will say it is not dignified
it is not christian
it is not american
it is not noble
but lust is democratic--believe it or not
and most of all it is living
and it is human
but lust

see
now when we're praying for peace
we are praying for nothing less than miracle we
are not asking for truce or for a stiff smile what we are asking we
have to ask with utter love because what we are
asking for is utter love
what we are asking for is that that son of a bitch, you
know who and that bitch, oh that old bitch you can't stand
who can't stand you
will one day stand in front of you
and you will run to embrace
frankly i don't know that's possible in this life
time, but in all the times of my life
i'm going to try to live by it
what you are asking for, praying for, living for peace is for a terrorist
to drop his bomb and run to kiss the people he would attack
and for victims to rise up from the ashes of blown up buildings
wipe off all blood and all grievance and
embrace the ones who bombed them so you see
this is no little thing
this is like praying for the incarnation
this is a cruxificion
but both have happened
again and again
and this can too

i sit here naked on my floor writing
poems of you
because i am obsessed with you
i come here clipping pictures by the door
because i am on love with you
and i am in love with obsession and
pbsessed with... well, you know...
and the road is to you
after being tired and frustrated
i am completely fascinated again
by the site of you
no dullness will do
after traveling down the same streets
bored by their lame treats the fire of
you
the desire for you grows
and the sight
of your behind is like the host in monstrance
the memory of your face
has all the grave of a novena
nine days nine nights
here all at once

so much that they hand me is useless to me
and all this candy is not
dandy so much as it is lame
and everyone is variations of the same hollow
spirit
all i want is dynamite
all i needs is the liquid explosion and
the path of brambles
down to ramble
away from the dull dull crowd
loud in my ears is the quiet
out of the city onto the cross
sunday school sabbath virtues
are lost in this
sodomy
and gommoracy
desire of you
is my fire you
only the curtain of lust
will do

are you still mad
and upset by your need
are you still overwhelmed
by your cocksucking greed
and how long till you
forgive me for longing for my touch
and how long before you
rinse the scars you cling to so much
will you ever be over
lying over me
and will you ever be out of
wishing for the inside of me?
and like every poor bastard who was
ever afraid, well the best part of you
is the you i have made

i remember you. when we made love your
back hurt, and later you showed
me the scars from your surgery and
they were beautiful just like the
rest of you, and i always hoped you
were well. i hope you are well now.

you are my mystic cocaine bible
i am liable to split open and
put all my soul in you
sing psalms between your legs and beg
judgments from the deuteronomy and leviticus
and numbers and numbers of your infinite charms
the genesis of your arms
like brass bands
your hands that command kings and chronicles and
make psychedelic sex manacles all through
the isaiah of my jeremiah
and it is over
close the sea and
going up jacob's sacred ladder
we will make our exodus

love
at two in the morning
all by surprise
is like a dream
happens in the place of half sleeping
and exceeds all waking
the making of love between midnight and
sunrise
has only half eyes open
stares into fantasy
and makes me
all unsettled
sweating and striving our
way into slumber
we wander into the home
of gods and sleep

i apologize for having been away so long
i was tired
i was half unable
still it was wrong
and i didn't know how much till now
to stay away from this my chamber
of thoughts and dreams
and reflections
and this is the house of dreams
and this is the bed of husbands
and this is love

will i be
can i be
shall i be
how can i be
worthy of thee
sanctified enough to lay
my hand in the thatch of your thick black
hair
with flecks of grey that had come even by twenty and
can i
be holy enough to lay my hand upon that chest, run it over
that breast covered in dark hair netted like steel wool
still was soft, soft, soft
to the secret place
and the secret smell of granymede's delight
soft to the secret, woodwind sighs and your lips
firm kisses,
the hits and misses of a beautiful boy, otter sleek and slender
rendering love like a beaver cleaver
all as american as apple pie
or as sex in a summer bed ;ate in july

you and me we're through the other
side of this long sickness and this
sick longing for things we could
not have
lovers i could not hold
goals that were borrowed from my
mother and stolen for my father
i can't follow that old line
of thinking that went the
same like day follows the night
and dimmed every light
and ever decent reason
here, in the smoke darkness, bugs settling on
my skin
we are the voodoo season
and what comes next i don't know

you are so beautiful to me
you are so cockraising to me
why do you hide your face from me
why do you keep your perfect
mouth from me
you know i would kiss it
or feel it
you know, if you were here i
would love every thick inch of your
flesh,
i would bend you over
and feast all on your sacred places
and enter the secret sanctum
and we would both--in after noon light--
shout amen

alleluia!

Amen

it takes to much energy to put on clothes
by this you know what i mean
it just takes too much to put on masks
and crucifixes and good class
and everything, including
this pretentious show on npr that's
drifting to me ears
right now, the only thing that matters
is to be naked
to be unafraid and unworking
while the gods descend
and to wait