When he's gone
the bed needs another blanket to be warm.
Often even a heating pad on his side.

I could just set up two heating pads
and without us, the bed would make more sense.

Better than two crap machines.
And more clean.

I'd write a poem for the drunk and insane.
The bitter and banged up.
If only I had something helpful to say.
Day comes some days as an enormous searchlight.
Exposing everything and showing nothing.
We'd like to think there's connection in pain
but mainly within it some wither and others assault.
So we just carry on under the glare.
Keeping an appropriate distance.
And carry the memory of night's emptiness to protect us.

Wow.

(Wow what?)

Just Wow.

Too many times now.

So many snaking paths arching and winding to this very door.

And what're you crying for?

Facing the grandest, vastest yawn,

what can one say but Wow?

And how.

The world gives so little that

eventually even the greediest must

count as his greatest treasure light seen glinting in the specks of dust.

The prickly rose does not flower,
and hides its thorns under artificial
innocence.

I ran wild in ecstasy through the night, leaping, tumbling, swinging;
but when I woke up, it was as if from a nightmare.

You are my axis,
from the root of the earth,
through my heart,
to the star field,
and back.

I can't see you,
but I can feel you;
like balance, you are always there
yet often I have to find you again.

Throughout the day
I am many animals:
leaping, cavorting, laughing,
hiding, crafting, contemplating...
There are times when I stop transforming
and I am either a shadow or a light,
a husk or a seed.

I don't know why it isn't easier.
But I can feel that axis,
that right place.
That place where the chaff
falls away
and I remember that I am alive.

You are my axis,
from the root of the earth,
through my heart,
to the star field,
and back.

As I lie past midnight
I watch fireflies signal urgently
green-white in the night
"I am here
have *** with me."

And think
of human courtship cries.
On Craigslist,
tentative men want to cuddle
and yuppies want to dine
(and much else besides).
At the milonga,
passion turns to counting steps
for some
(vice versa for others).
In parties, humor reigns.
Not always well.
Coquetry is a competition
and need is a sin...
except when it isn't.
(Someone somewhere's writing a poem
to keep hidden, yet irrationally
hoping to convince.)

I don't have a point.
Only that in our most simple instinct
we are so complicated.
And that despite our disenchantment, still,
it never ends.