It was when you said
I don’t love you anymore
that the moon became a dead sphere again.

It was when I said
Fine! See you later!
That the smile of a baby was no longer magic.

It was when we said
That’s it; it’s over.
That the insects buzzed loudest,
the sun hottest,
the day longest.
 
 

A LOVE POEM

I’m tired of hearing of Cupid’s sweet bow
and paeans to Eros’s antics,
You say what you want to but just so you know
I’m the last of the luke-warm romantics.

So I don’t intend here to sing of Amor
and let’s just skip over Prince Charming.
I’ll throw Disney, Ovid, and Grimm out the door.
My view is a bit more alarming.

I think human beings began to need love
when instinct evolved into reason.
If having fun took an importance above
having kids, we’d have gone out of season.

For some other creatures hold onto their mate
with dances or bright-colored plumage.
And others just offer themselves as the bait...
black widowers must truly hate groomage.
 Once mammals have mated, some feral instinct
compels them to raise their own young.
The parent and offspring will then become linked
by repeated strokes of pink tongue.

 (Some mammals mate for life, and some
 just mate for twenty seconds.
 “Love” bribes no others to become
 more of nature’s dumb fecunds.

 But when the human brain did flower
 and we parted with the apes,
 our instincts lost their primal power:
 they’re now just sour rapes.)

But it takes more commitment than given by lust
to keep propagating the species,
for conjugal life without love is a bust,
and the childrearing would be... just feces.

Without love’s miasma a sane man would say
“You can spare me her P, M and S.”
Machismo is also a high price to pay....
What women would choose such a mess?

So for mother and daughter, father and son,
we have love and not instinct to thank.
And since we choose family instead of fun,
Homo Sapiens’ ship is unsank.
 
 

THE WASP CALL

With the ringing of the telephone
she burst in noisy anger to my room,
and though uneasy by her presence there,
I adopted a tolerance as well;
she hadn’t done me any harm. Not yet.
 She danced in riot ‘gainst my window wall,
protesting her entrapment in the scene.
The fault was hers, of course, for it was she
who broke in where she hadn’t been invited.

I turned back to my business, let her have her airs,
observing now and then her graceful arcs,
her fury and uncomprehending collisions
with the glass windows of my study:
as moody a creature as I have known.

But then some pheromone must have hit her
and she began dive-bombing at my desk.
I quickly saw that we were done with peace,
and picking up a book of legal prose,
waited for her to circle round again.

She came back from the window in a rage—
her abdomen all throbbing stinger out—
I held the book up, she bounced off
more furious then ever, and came back.

I swung in haste, and then, again,
with deliberation and a calmer eye
I swung to where I thought she next would fly.
A solid crack against the book proclaimed
that I had rightly guessed her path of fight.

Her vulnerable body lay dazed upon the phone.
I picked up my old pen, and with deliberation
posed it over her familiar form.
Her steely outer shell crunched loudly, accusingly,

and then at last
I brushed her broken memory to the trash.
 
 

TOO SOON ALONE

Here do I lie, a youth so dark and fair,
Well sinewed, and of pleasing virile shape.
Long, thick and black and manly is my hair
That falls about my forehead and my nape.
Amid cottony luxury I lie,
Among the downy pillows by my head,
The quilted blankets here so warm that I
With difficulty pry myself from bed.
  My supple, bronze, and sleepy form
  Is not yet ready for the morn.

But as I rouse myself from flaccid rest
Each day and wake with stretch and flex and yawn,
And with the rising sun grow full of zest,
Then do I most regret my love is gone.
Now fully woke and fully full of life
And lust and tension and unmet desire,
I lie alone recalling how my wife
Awoke to husbandly and solar fire.
  Sweet were the days when she would wake,
  And my desire match, and slake.

But now I wake with fire unabated
And pull on clothes to hide my bawdy wants,
And wish our hour of parting could have waited,
Or that her memory would cease its haunts.
O, do not prune the rosebush in the Spring
When runs the sap so hotly through the root;
In Autumn will the cut less riot bring,
In Winter will the surgery be moot.
 O, let the roses have their day,
 The leaves will soon enough turn grey.
 
 

THREE LOVES

Three loves I’ve had in my whole life:
The First one loved me—as a brother.
The Second one is my ex-wife.
The Third is wed yet—to another.

When I was but a lad of twenty
I met a girl who was so fair,
He was struck with joyous plenty
Who saw her smile light up the air.

I wooed that girl in magic Spain,
Though now it seems to be ironic,
For our dullened States again
She said her love was just platonic.

When I was twenty-five, too young
Perhaps, to be already wise,
I met a girl, a flower among
The plains, with blue bewitching eyes.

I thought I’d found true love. We wed,
And when our love had run its course,
The flower found another bed,
Uprooting me in her divorce.

So after thirty I gave up hope
I’d ever feel another Spring.
Then all at once (I’m such a dope)
I fell for one who wore a ring.

And since I’d been already left
I never told her of my feeling.
I’d sooner be the one bereft
Than be accused of lover stealing.

 And now I sit at thirty-five
And think of how your tender kiss
Reminds me that I’m still alive....

Perhaps the fourth will bring the bliss.
 
 

BEETHOVEN’S VIOLIN CONCERTO

Your body, caught in the first advances,
sways slightly to the undulating music,
your mind drifts to forbidden thoughts:

sensual encounters with lithe young beauties
who arch ecstatic bodies as you embrace them desperately
they squeeze you and release you with each crescendo de-
crescendo.
The soloist hides behind a robe of orchestral chords
but you perceive the willing air underneath
patience pays off as the symphony falls away from the graceful
solo
glisteningly naked before you.

But the solo is playful
and does not want to get close just yet
running nimbly around the room,
coming back to keep you interested
playful, teasing,
increasingly sensuous again,
thrilling, enthralling, throaty,
and all at once
completely forgetting the tease
the voluptuous virtuoso overpowers you, insistent
crescendoing, demanding, unrelenting
grabbing you, throwing you to the floor
you gasp out in surprise, it leaps on top of you
and takes possession of you
 filling you, pulling you in
how is it so rough and so tender?
so brutal and so sensual?

And then suddenly it’s gone
leaving you shaking
quivering
resonating

trying to relive the moment.
 
 

MORE HEAT THAN LIGHT

1. Antagonism and aggravation act as an apparent affection
But bullying basically belies bonhomism;
Charles claims confrontation cannot create connection:
Doubtless discord does dissimulate devotion,
Extreme emotions evoke easy, empty empathies—
Friction forges familial feelings? Frankly, further fallacies.

ii. It’s easier to stir up sparks than warmth.
Deep love comes not from digging.
A wrestler knows no tender holds.

C. Crank up the volume.
Shout to be heard.
Ignore the message.
Attack the word.

d. Whenever we recongregate
The only way that we relate
Is when we noisily debate;
we beg to differentiate.

V. Who wants to be mushy and mocked
When you can be abusive and amusing?
 
 

NOT SEX, ROMANCE

As a gay divorcé who is halfway past thirty,
you might think that the trains of my thoughts are all dirty,
and that since the big day I split up with my ex
I’ve been thinking of nothing but sex sex sex sex.

Well it’s true that I’m drawn to the young and the pretty
and I like to go out when I visit the city.
It’s a thrill to exchange those seductive sly glances—
I admit I’ve a weakness for long-shot romances.

But if you will try it, I think you may find
that the thrill can be best when it’s kept in your mind.
Keep your lust to yourself and your hands off her waist
till first you have innocent romance embraced.

If you sit very still right up next to a girl,
you will find that her body heat sets you awhirl.
And just like two magnets held slightly apart,
I can feel the pulling at work on my heart.

One too-fickle woman I had long pursued
found herself unexpectedly thrown in the mood
underneath an umbrella in pouring down rain.
Proximity won where mere words were in vain.

Someone else whom I’d liked since the days we were young,
who remained unconvinced of the work of my tongue,
found herself warming up in the chilly night air
as we huddled together with mulled wine to share.

You might ask what’s the good to just sit there and cuddle
when you know panting hard gets her head in a muddle?
But, listen pal, try to hold on to your pants.
I’m speaking maturely now. Not sex, romance!
 
 

IMAGINARY KIDS’ BEDTIME STORY

There once was a beautiful maiden
with long silky golden-flecked hair.
Her eyes were the color of emeralds,
her skin was impossibly fair.

This girl liked a boy from her village:
tall, sturdy, dark, handsome and kind,
who sought only travel, adventure,
and didn’t have love on his mind.

Some thought he was shy from her boldness—
he needed a conquest to fight;
some said he was just a late-bloomer—
he’d later come seek her, all right.

Whatever the cause of his blindness,
one day he bade all fare-thee-well,
and left his home searching excitement...
and left the fair maiden, as well.

But she, like most beautiful maidens,
was followed by many a lad.
So when the two kissed their good-byes,
she didn’t appear all that sad.

Ten years then flew by like ten minutes
as he traveled both hither and yon
to slay smog-monsters in distant places
and to trap the accursed positron.

The maiden had her own adventures
and traveled the world’s far ends,
but ended up back in her village
to live with her family and friends.

The boy was a bit slower learning
that life is for love and not thrill.
For, despite what you may have heard elsewhere,
to win love takes not luck, but will.

One day he returned to his village,
tired, lonely, and deep in despair,
and to his surprise and delightment,
he found the young woman still there.

No sooner did he glance upon her
than he knew what he lacked in his life:
it wasn’t more quests or excitement,
but win the young maid for his wife.

But when he declared adoration
she gave him a sharp peevish look.
Then she said, “You are a just bit tardy,
and I’ve got other fish on the hook.”

So she turned her young suitor away.
So he turned from his only true love.
(The injury hardest to pardon
is the slap of rejection’s stiff glove.)

Two years more then passed by, and still neither
had found anyone quite as right.
He with each passing day loved her more,
and he dreamt of her each passing night.

So he finally returned, and he swore
that he loved only her, and no other.…

If you haven’t guessed yet, I’m that boy,
and the beautiful woman’s your mother.
 
 

CARVED IN WOULD

Many’s the time that I’ve thought of your name,
asleep or awake, night or day,
relighting my ardor for you, flame by flame,
yet your body stays quite far away.

Although I have tried to declare you my love,
nothing softens your heart toward mine:
not of wood is it made, but it seems, wouldn’t of.

Can you tell that my own is of pine?
at your first hard denial I gave up and ran—
more away from your “no” than toward “yesses”...
escape I cannot, so I must hope I can
return now to face my distresses...
 only you are the match to my happinesses,
 now please kindle the would, put an end to my guesses.
 
 

SNAPSHOT, 1994

Merry, and camera on,
Ah, the moment I captured has gone.
Radiance, beauty, and grace
Yesterday were displayed in your face.
Aureate silk of your hair,
Next to skin glowing rosy and fair....
No image ever so fine?
Can this dazzling photo of mine—
Art lovelier than the best
Masterpiece ever made in the West—
Exceed the geniuses past?
Renoir, Ingres, Boticelli, outclassed?
 One figure only, more charmed:
  Next to yours is this image disarmed.
 
 

52348617

I’d rather be stuck in a clunker with you
on the shoulder of Interstate 5
than driving a Jag at a hundred and 2
with the 3 swankest women alive.

4 I finally learned after all we’ve been through
since that night when we stayed out so l8
I’ll be 6 feet below when I quit loving you
no 1 else is a 7th as great.
 
 

INDIFFERENCE

You’re just an alley cat of hungry look
and long have pestered my life’s quiet nook
until I vowed to open up my heart
and bring you offerings to bridge the part.

I watched each day your tentative approach
and prided myself that I tried to broach
indifference. But with every passing day,
no sooner finished than you turned away.

No rancor for your alley blamelessness
to leave my hand before the first caress,
nor to indifferent gods who from above
delight in my Petrushka-luck with love.

But warmth is fading slowly from my eyes
reflecting coldness of November skies.
We’re all just mirrors of the love we live
So naturally I’ve nothing more to give.
 
 

GREEN OPALS

A sensuous silky cascade caresses
And enshrouds those glittering guesses
That I once pinned on you.

Those earrings—now shining through
Your fine soft hair, now out of view—
I sent as emissary for my love.

To show what my heart’s dreams were of
I picked a stone a cut above:
Green opals were to win my prize.

The green to set off your fair eyes,
A birthday birthstone surprise.
My choice was far too apropos:

Two opals with their opaque glow
No clearer could reflect your “no,”
And gave your answer extra force.

You oped the gates to take the horse
And left the Greek outside, of course.
But now I know at least that I have done

The best I could; the cause just can’t be won.
So now I’ll take my presence from your sun
Of brilliant opal hopelessnesses.
 
 

RE·TRE·BU·SCHEN

So it happened to you;
when you waited till two
for a dinner at ten
and he never came through.

Could it be that he knew
that you’d pulled that stunt too
on me time and again
at each non rendez-vous?

Do you think that it’s true
that bad karmas accrue
and your poor luck with men
is divine déjà vu?
 
 

JUST LIKE ME

So I hear that you’ve got a new boyfriend
and I guess that it ain’t my affair,
but I’m ‘fraid that he won’t be any godsend,
‘cause you got you a real flair
for getting mixed up with some dead ends
just like me.

And maybe you can’t understand why
I ain’t joining in your celebration.
Well, I’m not going to break down and cry
‘cause I don’t blame you for my situation;
so let go of the judgmental and try the
just, like me.

I used to thank heaven above me
for the joy of seeing your smile.
I still didn’t know what you thought of me,
But it got clearer after a while
that you never really did love me,
just like me.
 
 

SPLIT ENDS

I wasn’t quite so flip with her
nor playful as my wont,
but guarded every easy quip
and stifled every taunt.

It hadn’t always fared that way:
when we were merely friends
I’d let slip words that split her hair;
I cared not to what ends.

And then one day I fell for her
and then I learned to fear
that careless clumsy jokes I’d tell
might injure one so dear.

However, all that tact I learned
just made my speech less bold,
and only made her feel attacked;
her heart, toward me, went cold.

Ironic, my intents to charm.
Now I’m myself once more.
She’s showered with impertinence,
preferring boor to bore.
 
 

AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL

You think I’m not inclined to love,
you say I’m too aloof.
I have to cover up my heart:
it isn’t arrow-proof.

If I let down my guard and show
you how I really feel,
 you might come waltzing in or might
just crush me under heel.

But if you really want me, dear,
I’ll love you without end.
I only have to know that you
want more than just a friend.

I don’t do things by halves, my sweet;
don’t kiss with just one lip;
so please don’t get me started till
you’re ready for the trip.
 
 

THE PORTRAIT IN YOUR ALBUM

I saw the portrait of your younger self:
Your dainty nubile pose and bashful arms,
Your trusting eyes, alive with youth and health,
Your tender smile, prescient in its charms.
I could not take my eyes from that one page,
And envied luck your parents had been dealt
To have and cherish you at such an age.
A complicated longing, then, I felt:
To love the woman that this child became
And yet to be a father to that child.
I felt these yearnings in my breast inflame,
And then I saw why I was twice beguiled.
I think these two desires spring from one wish:
To be your lover, and conceive with you
A girl, so that sweet face would smile afresh.
If I could make that single hope come true
 My happiness would doubly shine:
 the mother’s and the daughter’s love for mine.
 
 

MORE PROMISE THAN OUR PAST

Let’s just pretend we’d never met till now
And that our paths had freshly crossed, somehow;
If you and I could have another start,
What if I told you that you owned my heart?

If you could only look into my eyes
and get beyond our past and failed tries
you’d see I look at you with only love.
Would that change what your view of me is of?

If you could let me hold you in my arms—
turn off your hypersensitive alarms—
I think my lips would better show than tell
how much yours hold me in their lovely spell.

If I could run my fingers through your hair
and any other place that I might dare,
Perhaps then I could show you just how much
my love for you is more than just a touch.

If you could only let your heart be free
to spend just one elysian night with me,
I think you would be satisfied, at last...
Our future holds more promise than our past.
 
 

WHEN I SEE YOU

It’s morning when I see your winsome smile
No matter what the hour; and for a while,
The sun’s still warmly rising in the East,
The kitchen smells of coffee, muffin yeast,
The dew is fresh and sparkles on the lawn,
Where traipses timid doe, and then, a fawn.

 And when I hear your voice, the flowers bloom.
You give my step a Spring through Winter’s gloom;
My frozen heart has thawed from just your laugh.
The passing robins flock on your behalf,
Entranced, as I am, by your cheerful grace.

And even bare trees blossom at your face.
 
 

ONLY ONE ROOM

There’s only one room in my mom’s house that’s clean,
and it isn’t this one that was mine.
One tidy, uncluttered, of all the eighteen,
that smells not of dust but of pine.

I’ve tried in the past to keep tidy the hall,
for it had the least flotsam about,
but Sisyphus laboring under the ball
couldn’t keep all her new debris out.

And the living room seemed at one time very near
to becoming presentably neat,
but as soon as I finished the process to clear
it, her backwash was tragically fleet.

No, the one that’s still clean is where my love once slept
which we cleaned out before she moved in,
and now that she’s gone I remark that it’s kept
as pristine as our unindulged sin.

It is strange to imagine this chaste demure
in a house that a twister just hit:
the eye on one room which remained sadly pure
and for that I shall always begrudge it.
 
 

AGONIES AND BLISS

1) Perhaps it isn’t clear to you the misery of my days
when we say our good-byes at night and go our separate ways.
When I go home I lie alone alive with memories
of how you looked and how you laughed
 and how you played the tease.

I long to lie beside you in your cozy feather bed.
My love would grow inside you while I cradle your sweet head.
I long to lie the length of you from chest to slender leg...
my words should have the strength to woo
 without the need to beg.

I wish we shared your bed last night—just skin against bare skin—
Your shyness would have taken flight, I think my love would win.
Your tender arms would find my waist,
 your lips would lose their pride...
I’d love you with such languid haste, you’d want to be my bride.

2) Last night was nothing much, I guess; a movie and some wine.
We disagreed on subtle touch of tannin, storyline.
We both sat on my couch except we didn’t get too close:
You seemed a wee bit grouchy, and I felt a bit verbose.

But in that low-key evening with that touch of awkwardness,
I felt the same old feelings that I wish I could confess:
I wish I had the pleasure of your company every night;
I wish we were together, whether in synch or in fight.

It matters not as much to me how smoothly we converse:
eye to eye, eye for an eye, I ate an eye, or worse.
What matters more to me is that the time is spent with you.
My love goes deeper than the hazards of the last set-to.

I know you waver on the brink; I know my chance is slim.
And yet I wonder what you think of how my head’s aswim.
I know you know I want you, dear, I want you by my side:
Your hesitation makes it clear, it’s much too weak to hide.
 
 

COURT’S END

I think the horse is not before the cart
To hope at last you understand my heart
And know that I have loved you from the start.

This love of you I think at least I’ve shown:
That I have had one dream, one dream alone,
To cherish you and have you for my own.

But your aloofness causes only hurt.
My heart’s abuse, ignored at every spurt,
Has made me lose my taste for hopeless flirt.

And unrequited love at last grows cold;
I find this one-way street is getting old.
I’ll shed this manly mask of being bold.

It used to be, I liked to play the man,
To try to win such favors as one can;
The slightest nod would spur me on again.

I wouldn’t want to wear a woman’s shoes,
Although the woman, passive, gets to choose:
The man must do the chasing, win or lose.

And if he stops before the battle’s lost,
And if he gives up trying to thaw the frost,
His ego’s saved, but at the victory’s cost.

Sometimes a woman’s love is slowly won;
The more you push, the more she thinks it’s fun
To contemplate her future as a nun.

I’ve held on very long, despite my fears,
To love for you I’ve had for many years
And dreams to share your future, hopes, and tears;

Until you want this too, my darling friend,
I’ll leave off hoping that your will may bend
and recognize my courting has to end.
 
 

A SCENT OF PIE

A hug
from you
is like
the scent
of pie
I cannot eat.

Why drug
me through
this spiked
torment?
Oh why,
mon Aphrodite?
 
 

BLEMISHES, WRINKLES, AND SCARS

The effect is indeed jarring
that the world keeps clanging along
content in its own noisy bliss

while I live a monotonous buzz.
Just u dulld, sullun hull
unburdnd uf luck und cumfurt.

The faint murmur of my heart
is trampled gaily by the passing hordes—
and these boisterous, cheerful folk

chatter of their lovely plans:
one ex-love now married and pregnant.
Another prattles noisily of her boyfriend.

And why not? Why should either love me
still? Why shouldn’t once-true loves
have found someone truer? I’m nothing much:
 just blemishes, wrinkles, and scars.
My hair, amorphous in its iconoclasm,
my clothing, dowdy,

lacking either form or color.
Repulsed by the mirror,
wallowing thick in it,

I play an angry dirge and then another
my flute now spitting with cacophony:
a mad dance for a madman in a mad world.
 
 

MY UNREQUITED ROMANCE

Alas! That ever I should have set eyes
on Fatima, whose thick luscious ringlets
silky, black and shiny so entranced me
that I was determined I should meet her.
I approached her in the dorm dining-hall
to ask her for the time or some other
conventional conversational line
and when she turned to smile me her reply
I almost died with joy to see her eyes.
Her cheeks were dark and smooth, her nose perhaps
larger than traditional aesthetic
allows, but I am drawn always and forever to the eyes
and from that moment knew that I was in love.
I offered my devotion on the spot
and promised her to love her tenderly or
roughly, as she wished. But she just laughed
and merely allowed my presence
at her table through the meal. I was entranced.

We became good friends but never lovers
despite my entreaties and attentions,
 as our years at school passed and we matured.
I was not given to jealousy, even when I knew
some boy was going to heaven in her bed,
and he an unworthy heathen.

None of my own romances took hold either,
and after I had graduated and moved
on out of state, I sometimes would worry
that perhaps a little more persistence
was all that was needed, two and not one
dozen ruby roses on her birthday...
or maybe if one night I’d spiked her drink.
Something, anything to break that restraint,
inexplicable, she held.

Now it is true that other women found
my lovesickness a charm, a magic spell to break.
I was wooed with gusto and aplomb
by many a splendid girl, desperate to supplant Fatima.
And in their zeal they gave me many nights of passion,
tender fragrant bosoms to embrace,
but none could wrest from my romantic altar
the image of those lovely almond eyes
beneath those savage tresses.

One day, two years upon our graduation
when yet another break-up caused my own
too-haughty heart to lay me low, the thought
occurred to me, of all the world’s woes,
at least my own had human form; I could name
to my pursuers the reason for their shortcoming.
Fatima could never give me this satisfaction.
And then I thought that perhaps now
she had an answer for me
so I called her fathers’ number and he said
that she was moving to my town, had sought
my number, to get in touch again. Surprised,
I gave it and waited an eternity of days
until the phone,
 the wonderful miraculous medium of happy messages,
began to ring, and then I spent a blissful hour
to chatter once again with my one love.
I offered her a room in my abode
until she found a place to call her own.
She accepted on conditions woefully platonic.

The next two weeks were feverishly spent
while I cleaned up and painted and polished,
bought food, new furnishings, and plants,
and in concession to my hope, a water bed,
silk sheets, and three bottles of her favorite champagne.
At last the day arrived, the sluggard sun
betook himself to rise, long overdue
and she was coming in that evening.
After a full day of work which dragged
on horribly, I took a walk to calm my nerves
for it would be three hours yet until
her car would park in front of my dreams
and out would step the one who caused my life
such tormented happiness. I strayed
through another park, drank a juice, and read the news
and then at last I headed back home
prepared to wait forever and a second
until she would arrive to recommence my tortures.

But when I returned to my apartment, her truck
was parked in front, and empty.
And running up the stairs I saw her there
with a strange man and halfway through
the second of the bottles meant for us.
It seems I erred the hour of her arrival.
She welcomed me with a kiss that stopped my tears
of joy and jealousy and self-anger
and introduced me to her cousin Fred
who as it happens lives in town as well,
and thanked me for the wine, and for the room
and then Fred took us both out for a bite
to a local cafe that he was glad to share.
 When we returned alone, we opened the last
bottle of her wine, of which she drank the most,
and then I showed her round the place, assured
her that she was to be at home.
She sat tipsy on my bed, and joked
that it was more comfortable than hers
and so without ado I joined her there
and told her that we could share that too
and then—I still am overcome by this—
she closed her eyes and fell back, pulling me
with her as we went down. She came alive
and was a demon of carnal desire,
leaving not an inch of skin untasted.
We didn’t sleep at all that night
but dwelt in passion and abandon
and she made me call out into the night air
until I’m sure the neighbors wanted to yell,
“Hey! Can’t you hear somebody calling you?”

But the next morning as our naked bodies
exhausted by frenetic agitation
lay tangled on the silken sweaty sheets
she turned to me and broke my heart
with her eyes before she even opened her mouth
to say she hoped we could just remain friends
and regretted her momentary judgement’s lapse
which that champagne had always caused in her
and vowed right then to never drink again.

I assured her that I could play
whatever role she wanted out of me,
and then with a wink to stop a tear,
I told her that she was welcome back
in my bed any time hers was too cold.
 In the shower, though, the tears poured out.
I cursed the world and bemoaned my fate
to have tasted long-sought opium
but one time only, and so addict myself to
a bliss I’ll never know again.

Curses, to love a woman so unresponsive—
well, okay, not exactly unresponsive,
but unrequiting, at least—and vowed to find
another woman to purge her from my mind.

But later that day at work, the sated
delicious feelings, and the reminder
of her tender lips on mine destroyed my will,
and since that day that she moved in, two years ago,
each night I hope she’ll want me,
each day she says that she wants only space,
although as friends we spend much time together
at movies, dinner, concerts, on the town,
and I would almost think that we were married
except those few hateful weekends, black,
when she has met some new guy, they go out.
This drives me crazy with a vile jealousy
but none of them have ever lasted with her
and then on Monday she’s back home.
She’s made it clear and clearer that she’s not
in love with me, that I’m to not expect
a thing from her, except her share of rent.
I’m not to try to put the moves on her again
or else she’ll have to move out.
To prove to her how well I understood,
I’ve even had my own girlfriend come up
and spend a night with me. No shock to Fatima
for if she heard any sound, she heard so little
she would have realized our own night of fury
was not threatened by this mild dalliance.
But that was months ago, and I will never again
so use another innocent woman.
 More stuck than ever am I am in love with
a woman who is my ideal realized
for beauty, grace, wit and warmth,
who has brought me more passion in one night
than I have known in all the rest combined,
and who is a better friend than anyone else
but who is not my lover.

But I have news for her, I have bided my time
for these two long years, but now,
I know her period, and sabotaged her birth control.
She has been long and longing, without a boyfriend,
and tonight I celebrate a big promotion.
I’m bringing home a champagne, innocent.
I’ll try my hand at other pro-motions
to set off the alarm on her biologic clock.

And if I have my way with her tonight,
and if she is made pregnant from this flight,
then I may win at least the love of one—
I’ll dote then on our daughter or our son.

Oh, she might keep the kid and leave me though,
But living with her but without her is such torture
that even hellish depths of loneliness are peace.
And if I’m luckier than ever I have been,
she’ll let me stay with her to raise the child
to love as a father and her friend,
(I do not dare to dream of other love)
and that will be a bliss plusouhaité.
 
 

THE LULU’S MUMU SONG

Dis here’s da story of ol’ Papa Zulu.
He fall in love wid little Mama Lulu.
He go gaga for her mumu chichi.

She dance chacha, boys say “woowoo!”
She turn lala, fluff like tutu.
Turn back, ouioui, it go frufru.
Haha haha!
Oh dat Lulu’s got a mumu chichi!

So Papa Tutu he say, “My, my!
You come chacha wid me, ayeaye!
‘Cause your mumu is muy chichi!
So come chacha with me, si si!
Not a nono to come gogo wid me!”

And da band play
“It big booboo
if you pooh-pooh
little tsetse, small as b.b.
but he bite you, and it’s byebye!
You go night-night so fast, mymy!
Tata, baby! Tata! Ya, ya, si, si!”

Now dat Lulu’s little cuckoo.
Too much wawa in her choochoo.
Likes him so-so... he’s on yoyo!
Will she chacha wid him? Hoho!
So they gogo da whole night until morn.

She dance chacha, boys say “woowoo!”
She turn lala, fluff like tutu.
Turn back, ouioui, it go frufru.
Haha haha!
Oh dat Lulu’s got a mumu chichi!
 
 

FOR ONE SWEET KISS FROM YOU

For one sweet kiss from you, what would I give?
Why, all I’ll ever own, so long I live.
For worth far more to me than world’s gold,
Your tender mouth, so loving and so bold.
The newest rosebud of the spring is shamed
Next to your lovely lips, perfection tamed.

To hold you in my arms, what would I do?
I’d gladly build the pyramids anew.
And though the labor cost my very life,
My arms would not take notice of the strife
But to my final day know only this:
That their embrace of you was earthly bliss.

To spend one night with you, what would that mean?
What value could I put on this dear dream?
O, do not ask the worth of Paradise,
Do not profane my Heaven by a price,
My longing for you burns me to the soul
I cannot bare such depths and still stay whole.
 
 

THE TIGER AND THE DOE

The tiger lifted lazily his head;
the southward breeze had brought him scent of prey.
Now see how creatures near are filled with dread
as his awakened tail starts to sway.
They needn’t fear; it’s not for them he rose;
he only stalks what whets his appetite.
Their meager bodies don’t arouse his nose
or to his tongue hold promise for delight.

But northward grazes tender supple doe—
her well-fed muscles always set to spring
She will be hard to catch, that he must know;
he no doubt thinks of what a feast she’ll bring.
 He quickly rises and makes his way forth
with stealth enough to give us pause, or thrill.
Relentlessly he plunges toward the north
till suddenly she feels a northern chill.

Alerted now, she raises up her head,
her eyes and ears alert for what’s amiss.
He freezes still, he moves less than the dead
but silence is as good as warning hiss.
So with a bound she leaps up from her grass
and madly dashes back to herd and hope.
The tiger leaps up too, his stealth now passed—
he closes ground on her with vicious lope.

She feints, she dodges, every muscle strained—
the mad agility of but the young.
Upon her every turn his breath grows pained,
he betters her for speed but not for lung.
If she can keep him off ten seconds more
she’ll have him beat, and she can go, unhurt.
But he’s still closing ground, and gives a roar
to curse her legs and give his one more spurt.

She makes one final dodge, a desperate lunge
upon a rock, then past a fallen tree.
We would have called impossible that plunge
but her legs work together perfectly.
The tiger’s larger bulk has not the grace
to execute this complicated leap.
Raw power could not weave him through that space;
at last she seems beyond his bloody grip.

Just when it seems that she’s now cheated fate
he roars and makes a monumental bound.
Both rock and trunk he clears, his leap so great;
he crashes through the brush and back to ground.
And then before the doe can even think,
the tiger has her in his famished jaws.
His fangs into her soft throat start to sink...
one final twitch, and she fends in his claws.
 
 

CHASER TOAST

Before you say good night, my lovely friend,
before this magic evening has to end,
I have a toast that I would like to send:

I wouldn’t want for us to part in haste
so let me put my arm around your waist
and talk to you of chaser and of chaste.

This chaser that I give you is a drink.
It washes inhibitions down the sink
and clouds the way one normally might think.

The chaste will give the chaser wide a berth.
For chaste are known to honor moral worth,
avoiding sinful pleasures of the earth.

All evening you have stayed beyond my reach
your self-restraint too difficult to breach.
So now I give you, “Dare to eat the Peach.”

Well, sometimes chasing gives the chaste a thrill.
And sometimes chasers have the stronger will
and sometimes chases finish with a kill.

Your flashing eyes and quickened pulse now show
that your resistance has at last let go.
The chase is done; the tiger has his doe.
 
 

A NEW COFFEE-MAKER

The coffee maker’s strange.
The situation isn’t:
the face is like the others—
intimate but impenetrable.
 We chit-chat over breakfast,
then go our separate ways.

And my fantasy—glimpsed
that from now on, each day
we’ll wake nestled together,
have coffee together,
grow old together—
is again only mine.
 
 

COLD LEAVES

A fog arose with us this morning
In the shower and the eau de toilette;
And you wouldn’t smile.

Euphoric with well-being I bumbled
Around you, staid and ill-tempered,
You excused your humour as a cold.

When we quit each other this morning
The pall lingered still.
Is your malaise contagious?

Your invitation to France had brought me joy
You bid us reach out, touch each other,
Twine our branches....

But it was written long ago.
Do you now regret it?
Why avert your eyes?

Is this cold you claim
In fact a cooling off?
Your eyes now bid not branches, but leaves.
 
 

THE BODY PARLIAMENT

My skin betrayed my loins—
my face grown taught and seer—
and though I dressed the youth,
as soon as I got near
she saw the wrinkle joins.
She called me “dirty gramps,”
was generally uncouth,
and stormed away in stamps.

So my unplanted seed
begrudged my withered face,
the scarecrow of the farm.
And so my hands and arms,
so awkward to her view,
continued just to waver.
My stomach gave a groan,
not only being the place
for her to reach my heart,
but solidly in favor
of rubbing on her own.
The lonely heart injected
“Buck up, there, bonnie lads,
we’re all in this together!
Biological drive, too!”
But then the back objected,
“It’s hard enough to cart
you shiftless idle cads
without more mouths to feed.”

Ironically, the mouth
alone had not a word.
What happens further south
is, simply, just too far.
Though generally pro-kiss,
cognac and a cigar
are also oral bliss,
 but makes the chicks complain
as they do when lips croon
loud arias to the moon.
And so, when votes are heard,
The lips alone abstain.
 
 

A WINTER HIGHWAY STROLL

I step through crumbling concrete, sprawling weed,
Graffiti, trash, past disemboweled house
That once was home to boisterous man and spouse.

Above the scattered flotsam of these slums
The soulless grey of sky extends its shrouds—
Not etherized, but dying. And these clouds

Have shadowlessly mirrored my own thoughts
Of how the universe, indifferent, still,
Observes, absorbs the throes of our last will.

And testament of fragile, puerile hope:
This soulless home that’s left to rot and fall.
The same impassive chaos waits for all.

Beyond this asphalt roadway lies the shore
Where cold grey waters of the torpid krills
Reach out, reclaim their empty, shattered shells.

So follow other paths on sunless days
Unless, like Orpheus, you venture here
Armed with some inner song against despair.
 
 

WHATEVER ONCE YOU LIVE FOR

If you have found your solid ground in love or other lies,
when you are cold and start to mould you’re in for a surprise.
Whatever once you live for with whatever joys and woes,
you’d better make it worth it now before you decompose.
 
 

PLATHETIC

They’re sure
That she’s a genius
Though no one’s sure what she said.

Still, borne out by her
abortive alliterative alienation
she felt deeply what she wrote.

And the suicide cult of the cultured
Catch all her cathartic ranting
And can’ting.

But I hold the other
End and stand
Against the angst-consumed:

Sure they’re
Right the lie is bright,
The brightness is a lie.

But don’t glorify them!
There is no Nirvana in the
horror of the Kurtz Cocaines

Just because they have the strength
(I call it weakness) to burn so bright
That their very flame extinguishes itself,

For it takes more fortitude to
Withstand the lie,
Stand, with the lie.
 
 

FAMILY BLISS

For many years I had my fears of living life alone;
I sought a heart, a counterpart, a soul to match my own.
A lonely soul is like one pole of an electromagnet:
It needs a match and seeks to catch it in some drageur dragnet.
I found no love that lasted unlike many of my friends,
but now I see their bliss is frayed and showing ragged ends.

The ardent glance and sexy dance go slowly out of date.
The sacrifice that once seemed nice begins to grow in weight.
Their eyes betray the sullen way they listen to my tales
Of Maui bumming, midnight drumming, writing odes to whales.
At least I’ve had my chance to write and travel and explore.
They cannot take their kids to where McDonald’s has no store.

One brother who had sired two has bank notes now to pay:
His nesting haste made talent waste: he works for banks all day.
Another’s wife prefers a life of opulence and ease;
He works so much he’ll never touch his murals or his frieze.
These husbands, now responsible, have other mouths to feed,
And procreative urge has sent creative urge to seed.

So over time I learned to find some solace in the fact
That in my youth I learned the truth of how the chips are stacked:
If you believe that love will leave you time for other goals,
If you still think your art won’t sink on obligation’s shoals,
You may be disappointed to discover later on
Few families will settle for a father too far gone.