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 whom I hoped to reach by writ… you beyond the multicolored tangle of telephone wires, you with your white paper soul trampled in transit,

Narrowing life because of the fear… narrowing it between the dust mote… narrowing the pink baby between the green-limbed monsters, & the drooling idiots,

Bobbing in the waters of the womb, little godhead, ten toes, ten fing… & infinite hope, sails upside down through the worl… My bones, I know, are only a cage

I put our books face to face so they could talk. They whispered about us. I put yours on top of mine. They would not mate.

Male? Female? God doesn’t care about sex & the long tree-shaded avenue

You open to me a little, then grow afraid and close again, a small boy

Knowing our lives a drowse towards death (attended by dogs & children) how can it not matter

For centuries we have lain like this, our warmths intermingled, our hearts beating the same two-step,

You can be hurt because you want too much; because in your face it says: love me, nurture me; because in your teeth it says:

There is only one story: he loved her, then stopped loving her, while she did not stop loving him.

Parachuting down through clouds shaped like whales & sharks, dolphins & penguins, pelicans & gulls,

And his dark secret love Does thy life destroy. —William Blake Because I would not admit that I had nurtured

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…

You hate the telephone but will not see me face to face so I am left beseeching you