Because she wants to touch him, she moves away. Because she wants to talk to him, she keeps silent. Because she wants to kiss him,

You-the purest pleasure of my life, the split pit that proves the ripeness of the fruit,

Not wanting to write for fear that anything– the passion for the page, the love of carbon ribbons & e… will distract me from your face,

I sit in the black leather chair meditating on the plume of smoke that rises in the air, riffling the pages of my life

The whole world is flat & I am round. Even women avert their eyes, & men, embarrassed by the messy way

Next birthday I am thirty-six, & formed (for all intents & purposes) in tooth & claw.

If it is only for the taking off– the velvet cloak, the ostrich feather boa, the dress which slithers to the fl… with the sound of strange men sigh…

With his head full of Shakespeare… and old notions of poetic justice, he was ready with his elegies the day the ocean sailed into the… ‘The sea,’ he wrote, 'is a forgivi…

I sit at my desk alone as I did on many Sunday afternoons when you came back to me, your arms aching for me,

We used to strike sparks off each other. Our eyes would meet or our hands, & the blue lightning of love

You operate on the afternoon You perform open heart surgery on the ghosts of your suicidal friends You divorce your parents

The house of the body is a stately manor open for nothing never to the public. But

When the devil brings him, like a Christmas puppy, examine his downy fur & smell his small paws for the scent of sulphur.

A bespectacled artist called Lear First perfected this smile in a sn… He was clever and witty; He gave life to this ditty - That original author called Lear.

Because my grandmother’s hours were apple cakes baking, & dust motes gathering, & linens yellowing & seams and hems