It’s neither red
nor sweet.
It doesn’t melt
or turn over,
break or harden,
so it can’t feel
pain,
yearning,
regret.

It doesn’t have 
a tip to spin on,
it isn’t even
shapely—
just a thick clutch
of muscle,
lopsided,
mute. Still,
I feel it inside
its cage sounding
a dull tattoo:
I want, I want—

but I can’t open it:
there’s no key.
I can’t wear it
on my sleeve,
or tell you from
the bottom of it
how I feel. Here,
it’s all yours, now—
but you’ll have
to take me,
too.

Two full cypress trees in the clearing
intertwine in a way that almost makes

them seem like one. Until at a certain angle
from the blue blow-up pool I bought

this summer to save my life, I see it
is not one tree, but two, and they are

kissing. They are kissing so tenderly
it feels rude to watch, one hand

on the other’s shoulder, another
in the other’s branches, like hair.

When did kissing become so
dangerous? Or was it always so?

That illicit kiss in the bathroom
of the Four-Faced Liar, a bar

named after a clock, what was her
name? Or the first one with you

on the corner of Metropolitan
Avenue, before you came home

with me forever. I watch those green
trees now and it feels libidinous.

I want them to go on kissing, without
fear. I want to watch them and not

feel so abandoned by hands. Come
home. Everything is begging you.

When face to face we stand
        And eye to eye,
How far apart we are——
As far, they say, as God can ever be
From what, they say, is Hell.

                    . . . . .

But, when we stand
Fronting the other,
Mile after mile slipping in between,
O, close are we,
As close as is the shadow to the body,
As breath, to life, . . . . . . . .
As kisses are to love.

                    . . . . .

I’m waiting for the words        to catch up to my heart    which is 
elliptical at the moment            there’s an apology 

even I am expecting to bore out of my throat

                                                                         but what for            what for 

I am continuing to write in a font        that displeasures me 
            everything shifts so rapidly

my body           the environment           my body            the environment

why not return to something as aggressively unspectacular as arial

a font for all my first thoughts             today I typed the words
                                     “someday, again”

and deleted and retyped                                   deleted and retyped

inside of the collapse                I am still holding on to narrative
            this is not sentiment                 it is how I keep my family together
when I breathe in deep enough I feel it            all the old anger 
waiting to become newer anger            not having the words 

can feel like not having something to hit          I think I wrote that in another poem 
            before

what is the equation that solves everything       ideas are commodity 
            even the idea that ideas are commodity            I don’t even know 

what I have to sell        I’ve spent my entire life living on a fault line
            I know all that’s been made is inherently broken.
This is not me being dour        this is me writing a note
that says I miss you                              I meant that the other way

but the one you were thinking works, too

SAY my love is easy had,
      Say I’m bitten raw with pride,
Say I am too often sad,––
   Still behold me at your side.

Say I’m neither brave nor young,
   Say I woo and coddle care,
Say the devil touched my tongue,––
   Still you have my heart to wear.

But say my verses do not scan,
   And I get me another man!

I made mosaics
laid my heart’s tiles on display.
Now, you walk on them.

Looking up at the stars, I know quite well
That, for all they care, I can go to hell,
But on earth indifference is the least
We have to dread from man or beast.

How should we like it were stars to burn
With a passion for us we could not return?
If equal affection cannot be,
Let the more loving one be me.

Admirer as I think I am
Of stars that do not give a damn,
I cannot, now I see them, say
I missed one terribly all day.

Were all stars to disappear or die,
I should learn to look at an empty sky
And feel its total dark sublime,
Though this might take me a little time.

The truth is that I fall in love
so easily because

it's easy.
It happens

a dozen times some days.
I've lived whole lives,

had children,
grown old, and died

in the arms of other women
in no more time

than it takes the 2-train
to get from City Hall to Brooklyn,

which brings me back
to you: the only one

I fall in love with
at least once every day—

not because
there are no other
 
lovely women in the world,
but because each time,

dying in their arms,
I call your name.