I can feel your presence,
I can feel your touch,
As I close my eyes to the darkness,
I can feel your warm breath softly brush,
It swathes my being,
It engulfs my soul,
Lost in an abyss of pleasure,
Desires of the flesh have taken control,
Nothing is sacred, nothing is taboo,
Lust is the power, the wisdom and the fool.

Curled beneath the Christmas tree,
On this snowy Christmas Eve,
Lay my daughter, nearly three
Upon this perfect bed.
Asleep and warm in footed wear,
Tinsel static-ed to strands of hair,
Glistening lights ‘gainst skin so fair,
Halo her youthful head.

There she dreams of dreams her own,
That circle ‘bout her life, her home;
Doesn’t fear the world unknown;
I pray such times remain.
With eyelids’ flutter, weaves tomorrows,
To fill with splendor, not of sorrow,
From her, such vision I will borrow;
And will live my life again.

Nestled lone, in face of fire,
Breathing deep, this sweet admire,
With new eyes see all my desires,
How life has blessed so far.
Then, with scent of piney resin,
Awakens precious Christmas present,
Blue-eyes sparkle, sleepy crescents,
The babe beneath the star.

Sometimes
when I do something
a little less
than good,
the mind
bugs me
with a guilt trip
to ****** land,
and I know
that morality
is a cornerstone
of Buddhism
which I subscribe to,
but the moral, virtuous, pure way
bothers me
as does the chemistry
of the mechanism of the mind
which gives me
this crap.

Two boys
and girls
unclothed each other
simply at a picnic
flush with wine
alongside
sun-flecked trees.

The girls,
easy as the
forest round,
burned,
delicious,
as the boys
eager and nervous
in unequal measure
partly gave up
concealing
their joys
at forgetting
or remembering
in flickers
their bare bodies.

It went on
over nettles
and half-hours
and clambered
trees and
photos taken
almost formally
(on film,
of course).

And boyish lust,
at first sinuous,
a darting tongue,
began to
soften against,
for instance,
the sheer,
unthinkable
texture
of the two
girls carved
now backward
over the bough
of a storm-felled elm.

And there
in the embers
of evening
they learned
to thrill originally
at the vast,
gorgeous
and astonishing
irrelevance
of what
might happen next.

My hands aren't big enough to be a substitute for yours.
Wrong size, wrong texture, wrong angle.

I need you, warm on my ****.
I need your fingers swirling in me.
I need you talking to me
And looking at me with that predatory stare.

I need you now.

The way I felt when you came up to me
on the second day of school,
and I thought you were being nice,
but you only did it because the teacher told you to.

The way the sound of your laugh is deep and heartwarming
and how I hear it in my head when I take the dew covered back roads home
on my bicycle before 8 p.m.
because my mom will yell at me if I get home at 9,
and when she does yell
I just think of your laugh
and your face
and it’s better.

The way your cat tries to chase the light
reflected off of the face of your broken watch
and how you always put it on the ceiling
and drive him crazy.

The way I took a shower that night with all of my clothes on
and I couldn’t explain why

The way the water reaches out from under the wheels of your car
while the rain beats down on the hood, and I smell the dead worms from my window, wondering where you are going

The way I can’t sleep without noise in the background
because I used to live in the city
and you would always turn on a whirring whispering fan
so I could fall into dreaming with you next to me,
smelling the mildew and flour in the air
my mother calling and calling
but we would never answer the phone
because the ringing just made it easier to sleep

The way your hands knew exactly what to do
in the night
parting lips and hips and breath
when my mother went to her book club
and I snuck you through the back door
praying my neighbors wouldn’t tell

The way you looked at that building
in the middle of the dark damp city
and brick didn’t come to your mind.
But instead, you saw the single soul that designed that structure
that you could live in one day,
if the world blew up.

The way the sky is the ocean when I’m with you.
The way the ocean is the ground when I’m with you.
The way the ground is the sky when I’m with you.

The way we both knew that I wouldn’t know what to do here if you ever left,
and now I’m lost

The way I feel while I send you this letter.
The way the envelope tastes bittersweet
And the way I know you will never get it
because you live somewhere else now,
in a sad place where you can’t hear me anymore,
although I sing as loud as I can.

The way I think about you
while standing up on the roof of my house
shivering in the sleet
on a sad Thursday evening
my mother looking for me all over the house

The way you feel when you hear Bob Dylan,
and I just don’t get it.

The way I feel when I hear a baby crying,
and you just don’t get it.

The way sometimes I think maybe we’re not supposed to “get it”
but *******, I want to try like hell anyway.
And we can both understand that.

Four weeks later
I'm still sad about it.

     listening to songs
                                   I wish you had
                            played for me



remembering
                           the day we walked through
                           a snow fallen    
                                           forest

beautiful, more than anything.
                    I couldn't believe it

and we walked for a long time,
                     just in silence

and we were scared to hold each
                                             other's hands

(maybe it was just me that was afraid)

                    When we walked back to my
                                      room

                  an­d you fell asleep in my arms

                                     I kissed your forehead
                               and felt a world of



                                              everything
­                                                         in my heart


Just like you said I would
when you dared me to fall in
love with you.
                         And then
                                    I did


When you awoke,
                                  we
undressed each other
                                    slowly

while deep lip kisses

               burned into my brain



I fell for you.  That's the
              hardest thing in the world
to admit
                   because everyone said I
would fall for you


but I wanted to prove them
                                          *wrong

you didn't have to try so hard

to convince me
that you loved me.



your poems were enough



your eyes were enough.