when i can creep into our 3 am bed
slink into the sliver of mattress
you saved for me watch the streetlight
slice through the curtain leaving a streak
of fluorescence in your hair stare
at the ceiling and wait   maybe
you’ll steal back the covers maybe
you’ll offer me your leg maybe
you’ll beg for quiet then in a whisper
so not to stir the monster masquerading
as jeans on a chair you’ll ask get any
writing done?  no, read two articles though.

they say love is no different than large amounts of chocolate.
also, the cocoa bean will soon be no more.

Don’t leave, she said to me last night. Her name means Light To Me.
Don’t leave this dooming feeling. Don’t jump. Her name means Unjump
The Darkness. Staying is a kind of writing, she said. Writing is a kind
of loving. Loving sticks a widget into the machinery of doubt.
Sticks it out. She knows what I’m afraid of. Biggest grief.
Tunnel of unforgiveness. She knows stay and say are two siblings
walking home in the rain. And I do wonder how to love without
dissolving, how to stay without unloving. Isaac Luria in the 16th
century argued God wrought the world because without it, God had no
expression for compassion, generosity. God might have been a giver,
but how can anyone cup a hand around another hand
              if there’s no other
yet, just infinite beforeness. Knock knock, the lemon squeezer says,
Who’s there, says infinite beforeness, It’s me,
              the stainless steel responds,
I’m God, you’re citrus, let’s start a world. Nobody’s a mother without
somebody to blame. Nobody’s born unwedged between dirt and sky.
It takes something round to wrap round something round, press down,
press hard and love comes out. THIS ISN’T HOW LOVING GOES,
I’m yelling at Isaac Luria’s grave, blue as a thwack of sky on stolen
land. The thing about staying, she’s saying, is staying
              drapes itself over everything
you’re scared of. Like a blanket full of button holes, and stars wedged
into them. The thing about blankets is they’re less threatening
              than love.
Her care pins me to a place called Here. Her name means Generous
To Me, and Pressing Hard With Buttons. I’m trying to say Yes
              to the holes
where buttons go. Yes to the cupped hand before fruit, to the sting
of juice. I could live here between dirt and sky, grow a garden
in the storm drain. I could grow the garden here—Edenic river
of honey, milk, river of balsam, of wine. I could spread out here
and stay. Pin my fears to paper, regret and what they call
“The Great Friendship Recession.” THIS ISN’T HOW
LOVING GOES! I’m yelling just before the world
begins. The world gets made each morning.
And we’ve emptied all the garden’s fields.

unfortunately, or blessed, it could have been
hours, or years, but it was hours
we disappeared into, touch i shouldn’t
savor, not this day, not while missing you,
not this deep in love, but a year ago,
or was it days, we said  i do
which under it laid dozens more commitments,
one being our commitment to pleasure,
to touch, to the touch of others, so  i do
but also  i will continue to do it, that it,
with people that are not you—love,
believe it, or not, lives in that promise
too, i love the sounds others pull from you,
i love your ecstasy even if i’m not around
to engineer it, and here i am, on the other
side of the promise, on the other side
of the world, underneath this person
who i have promised nothing
but my attention and effort until it’s done,
and it was, done under the moon
until the rain started and, then, done
under the rain, i am ashamed to say it,
but i must say it: i would have asked them
to stay, to do it again, to touch me forever
had i not, and thank God i did,
placed my forever in you, but amor,
amor, you should have seen it, us:
beneath the rain, a storm,
under the promise, my loaned breath.

any way you slice it i was born for a good time

some of my primary interests include pomp
circumstance
occasion
and carousing

love a kickback and a kiki
very much love a tea

weddings
graduations
meg’s monday night birthday function i stayed at waaaay too late for a monday night

i’m mariah carey on qvc repeatedly describing herself
and everything she loves as “festive”

i’m andré leon talley specifying he wear a caftan
for his cremation

my dearest ellery said he can’t remember a boring day in his life
i’m free will agnostic
but with each conscious choice toward that ethos

the need for sleep
the need to labor
two little devils strapped to my back who synergize
to ruin quality time

just rude
needy
and greedy

depending on who you ask
i’m going to hell and all my girls are too
i’m afterlife agnostic but if some kind of something comes next
what else to call it besides the afters, the very last afters

and if my girls are there with me
i’m good

we’ll know who to haunt and do it well
dressed to the nines in maggot-drenched couture