stoking and stroking

very, very often, but not every day,
she wakes me with a tonguing
on my clean shaven heart,
I ask not why, lest it break the over ten year,
she be magic spelling, a hexagonal licking put on me

after
ten  years she gets cat curiosity bitten,
   asks me if I want to know the wherefore,
      pretend not to hear, re-awarded with an elbow
        between the ribs five and six, grunting me a ‘sure’
          (that’s a surly unsurely, no - not really)

“you don’t take care anymore enough of the body I embrace,
so I am my own your health plan, licking your chest cavern,
one of a defensive medley of many medical techniques,
stroking the heartstrings vibrato, stoking the hearth fire,
purely selfish you see, all I ask is you purr as you do,
lay still, accept my pill of vitae min no-calorie surgery,
for ten more years, let your heart be stirred,
keep the bad stuff excised, and let the desire of returning fire
of your taste buds, be forever for me...”

when you understand my poems perfectly then,

their utility is inutile,
their usefulness is, will. always be, in the

nth  

reinterpretation, a million and still counting,
as long as you must guess at its labyrinth inner wired construct,
be pleasured by the roiled and rolled curves upon your tongue,
two lives (yours, mine), a paired wine tasting, we together,
believing in the greatness of joyous frustration

some say, as I do, the world is better for the
utility of thine own struggled understanding,
the truest combination of two way communication,
surpassed only by our at last armed embrace,
when at last we understand our mutuality of need and salve...

If freckles were lovely, and day was night,
And measles were nice and a lie warn’t a lie,
Life would be delight,—
But things couldn’t go right
For in such a sad plight
I wouldn’t be I.

If earth was heaven and now was hence,
And past was present, and false was true,
There might be some sense
But I’d be in suspense
For on such a pretense
You wouldn’t be you.

If fear was plucky, and globes were square,
And dirt was cleanly and tears were glee
Things would seem fair,—
Yet they’d all despair,
For if here was there
We wouldn’t be we.

Humanity i love you
because you would rather black the boots of
success than enquire whose soul dangles from his
watch-chain which would be embarrassing for both

parties and because you
unflinchingly applaud all
songs containing the words country home and
mother when sung at the old howard

Humanity i love you because
when you’re hard up you pawn your
intelligence to buy a drink and when
you’re flush pride keeps

you from the pawn shop and
because you are continually committing
nuisances but more
especially in your own house

Humanity i love you because you
are perpetually putting the secret of
life in your pants and forgetting
it’s there and sitting down

on it
and because you are
forever making poems in the lap
of death Humanity

i hate you

The Notre Dame is burning,
and no one understands why I’m upset.
No, I’ve never seen it in person,
never been inside to admire its beauty,
but it’s been in me.
For years,
Paris has been this image of perfection,
of dreams coming true,
of life being fulfilled,
and now,
the Notre Dame is burning,
and I can’t stop crying
over a place I’ll never go.