Two inches,
you frighten me
and
make me swoon.

I'm at a loss
to know the difference.

I can't tell you why.
I don't know why.
You're living just as well as I,

but baby mouse,
I'm sorry,
you're going to have to go.

The sweat on Sydney Poitier's brow
might just save us all.

How dare he
sell us our own souls
with so sweet a tenor.

Anne so sleepy
so tired of gritting.
Her lungs pulsing
for a decade or three.
Only she could kind enough,
to grant the night off.

Quincy moans and mourns,
but won't pick a side.

Switchboards tie us to each other,
like saxophones,
eventually.

This movie's about suicide.
Telly Savalas stood stone in the wings.

And I guess,
if we're going to just quit,
it's right that
Kojak should be there,

scowling on a sucker,
to call the time of death.

sometimes in the shower
i heat the water
until it scalds and suffocates.

a few minutes later
i acclimate,
and do it again

and again

until the whole house
is hazy
with steam,
until you screech
like a teakettle.

then pink and raw,
more sweat than soap,
i grow dizzy and breathless

turn you off

let the recycled air
cool me like mint.

i walk around the rest of the day
with new skin,
glutted and brave,
radiating heat and blood.

*

so, i guess,

my darling,

for me,

eating you out,

is something like that.

your armory of sneers
is like the statues in the alcoves
of notre dame.

sure, they're all different,
but people only notice
one or two.

I scan the room for smiles
like radar pings,

homing in on
easy love.

After five minutes
of pleasant conversation,
or twenty
of clenched teeth,

I grant myself a cigarette
and the stolen secrets
of a stranger's back porch.

There's always some other snake there,
and I remember to,
next time,
not wait so long.

I pelt you with puns
while studying slate.
Insult all your friends
til you bellow and trill.

Clumsy and desperate,
I break taboos,
like a ***** boy
testing new squeezes.

It's just that
when I make you laugh,
I can risk to see.

Like a solar eclipse
I can meet your eyes,
in those brief brutal breaths
where I made Light snort.