You are the drummer, you are not the beat.
          What a tune.
We play a silence from the string and snare.
It is love that thumps against  the ear.
Without this love, the music is a lie.

I was normal
until the story of love
thoroughly confused me.

So now I have to chose
from a selection of hopes-
none of them attractive.

I can let the dogs dissect
my limbs, so my new body
can heal you all,

but then my weariness
will not be curable
even by eternal sleep.

If nothing else, I've learned this.

          The only words to fear
          are the deathless words.
          Keep them out of touch,

          but not out of sight
          as the gazelles glance and
          bounce round the lion.

I permit myself a ****** season,
so nothing corresponds with me-
Minaret, moon and wall are
all too sophisticated to stoop so low.
But, the very dumb sands
of the desert quiver and hiss
towards my soul
and drive my hips
away from discretion
and out towards
the thrilling oblivion
of you and me
shameless and beyond.

It's like trying
to see lightning.
I sat long enough
this Tuesday twilight,
brave enough watching
the twilight sky,
brave enough to forgoe
a glance to the right
to make sure a racoon
hadn't stumbled upon me,
and it and I, startled,
would scrap, resulting
with my hand bitten -
embarrassing cowardice.

Brave enough I watched
and the lightning climbed
a height! It etched itself
round the top of the thunderhead
that towered above and above
other domes that I assumed were the height,
but higher even, the lightning climbed,
and I wondered if it knew I watched,
cause it took its time- not a blink,
but a scrawl up the round height of the dome
at a height that I dared not know existed.

Could not be more unremarkable, me,
on the stoop, on a Tuesday twilight,
but the height, and the height,
and the lightning will be there, good-
good as my mother's skin under
her thin, summer top, good as the
first girl fervent enough to undress
with me, good as my wife inviting
me to come through all the boredom
and distress, good as the end,
when I'll know the lightning
sees me, cause I'll see the lightning.

I'm sorry that my paradise is so useless.
It doesn't save anyone, doesn't build structures
at which they might marvel. It doesn't
add anything to the design
of civilization's advance.

It's just me, here, resisting application,
in great gratitude and delight, happy
to wait for the day that you and I
will tackle each other, and be defined
by our wet, naked love.

I embraced my lover,
and noticed she was dying,
not now, but always dying.
So I spanked her with magic numbers-
      seven, and nine, and forty,
and my clothes fell from me,
and my body fell from me,
and she was fearless as heaven,
and this was love.

My father died in his sleep.
My heart filled with gratitude,
and I touched the ashes of
his remains without hesitation.

I walked close to her - the curvy,
tanned girl who raised her naked
leg. I walked closer to her, claiming
the comfort of our naked kisses.

I have done these things, brave,
only to extent that I was reassured
by the anonymity of loves conflagration.
You have done these things as well,

and so we are instructed-

      If your going to stand,
            stand tall, and light.
      If your going to fall,
            fall heavy.
      If your going to pray,
            call to heaven
            with all your body,
            all your beauty,
            all your sorrow,

      and know.