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

i am at the end of something
i'm not terrified but i am fried
weak as a fiddle i am tried by
little bitty fires
i tires quickly, loses peace and literacy
the little me has to sit down
and if i sit down will you meet
me here?
before i drown, will you meet me here?
on the other side of sorrow will
you meet me
there are demons and tomorrows
to defeat me there
so in my tired praying
can you show me here?
can you meet me here?

can it be that there's a fear that feels like
dullness
can it be that there's a death that feels like dryness
or does love have an end that ends in yawning
and what would i give to be pawning
all this ragged life, all this wasted life
these half people, and this wasted life
can it be that going to the tomb is drowning?
and it can it be that the trumpet now that's
sounding is the final revelation that my
faith in destination and beginnings
and in endings was just lying
lying here in the morning is just moaning
all my strength is gone i will be loaning
my ability to pay my bills and pay my
life, being a widow to the world when
i used to be a wife

poetry not prose will get me here
there is the only way through the gate
and who am i to complain of this dryiness
and of this weariness
and who am i to weep at not crossing over
through tiredness
and who am i to complain of this life i'm given
yet in truth
i do
and who am i who has been given much
to be dry and tired the evil i've been given
or full of dread and disappointment
at what has turned out to be living
or still sitting here weeping,
waiting for my true love
pep talks and talks
and chatter do not matter
to make me what i'm not
and what i am right now is tired
and who am i to be so tired
to turn all weary
from your cross and yet
i do