“What still holds and rises
also seeks to perish” ~Gottfried Benn
1.
This first time I am in your bed
my mind travels toward you
over the terrain of a history we did not share.
Jealousy rises but does not hold.
How could I grieve my former lovers,
shed, like brittle, peeling sun-burnt skin,
or set aside like those scratched L.P.’s
from high school—
still capable of a truncated nostalgia.
I cannot fault your loving others.
I bury my nose in your pits
like a dog
that rolls in one stench or another,
hoping to carry the scent of our sex.
In this knot of limbs and lips,
there is no perfection—
and because of that, no perdition.
I am, at last,
not afraid of being lost
to the tedium—
to fragile humans offering
what solace they have learned,
perhaps painfully, to give.
I want to go back—
hold you from the beginning—
but I never had the right—
or the attitude
to pull you into my embrace
until I traversed a humbling path—
stripping my arrogance and entitlement—
embankments
that kept us apart.
2.
We want it all—
possessiveness,
freedom to move on,
obsessive unrequited love,
companionship.
We want familiarity
of the same lawn chairs
night after night,
watching an undifferentiated moon wax.
How long can we hold this pose—
keep what rises
from perishing?
3.
Before I die--
Let me savor an average man—
that is, you—
Let me pretend
we have always been a part of each other
that when I die
you will hold some part of me—
unforgotten.
Let our last embrace
be as tender as the first—
and in that moment,
without guile or regret,
I may accept Death
as sincere
as I believe you.
4.
Let Despair rise and fall as it will—
it has lost its teeth,
its pin pricks and hooks.
Despair cannot hold—
let it perish.
Today the sheets are sticky with us—
hairs curling, bodies matted.
Suddenly it is clear—
the fierceness I searched others for
emitted from a fixed point in my own feral core.
I watch pleasure
wash over your face.
I know at last my own complicity.
I let you have it—my lasciviousness
draining you until your legs shake,
too weak to open your eyes.
And then my languid receptivity—
stroking what rises in
you.
I do not wait.
I am here purely of my own crude resolve.
So what if you have pictures to hang,
dishes stacked in your sink?
What do I care that later today
I’ll brood alone in my unlit apartment
trying to make sense of us?
Right now I am picturing
my history of diminished lovers.
They cheer me on—
as if this is what they loved me for:
this savagery,
this fecund power.
5.
At last I can say,
you are enough for me—
that at this moment—
which is not true love,
which is not forever—
this morning
sunlight through slatted blinds
illumines your body
in day’s certain light.
This moment, comfortable
with forgiveness—
that we did not gravitate
in our first attraction,
with pardon for our slack bodies,
all ties to our youth gone.
For now, it is enough that I am here—
beside you in this light.
