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