At the Hospital

It is infuriating
how the fear of death
makes you so pathetic.

How you suddenly like life,
enjoy sadness,
regret the wasted days.

The peculiar thing is,
as they say,
that when you lose something
you understand
how important it was,

but when having a near death experience
you haven’t lost anything,
not yet

but the mere possibility
of losing
this life you have

this unimportant little life
with these few romances
the bromide blood ties
the ideas and contemplation
the fun and the years
and the mistakes
and the small acts of kindness
and the small efforts of creativity

it all coruscates
into a total
that in your mind
is so beautiful
that besides feeling
incredibly ungrateful

you also feel irritated
by the cowardice
you are washed in

precisely because of the beauty
precisely because you are not ready
to leave
not until you grow old
and the quality in your life
lessens enough
for you to become proud enough

to be ready enough to go.

And you are hungry suddenly
to live, to try
to climb towards the goals
and you don’t care as much
about the relationships
that went bad,
about your dissatisfying paychecks
or your appearance
and you almost pray
for another shot

and all the stupid sadness you had
appears so wasteful
like a meal run cold
over an argument.

Care less or care more?

Sunday Service 

I want you to chain me
to the bed like a cross
fallen sideways.

Wind blew hard, lips pursed,
knocked Christ right over.

That tongue better start
singing hymns to my skin.
Wrap your beads around
my wrists until blood
draws in sacrifice. 

Reach hands up
high in worship.
This holy water
we blessed fogs
every window. 

Service only lasts
an hour before
we break bread.

When Death Calls

Love opens the door inside the dream 
we call today. In eases Death. 
I sit the freak on the sofa. 
Slip into the kitchen to fix drinks. 
Hear Love invite our guest to leave. 
Death mumbles something I can’t make out 
above the seltzer fizz and the cubes clinking. 
When to the living room I return, 
hand each a cold sweaty glass, 
Love stands at the window, 
watching a cloud eat the sun. 
Death, on a cushion slouching, accepts the mix 
of bitters, lime, soda, spirits. Grins into my face 
he hopes Love and I are well enough making out? 
Opening the door to tongues tangling 
anxious poetry; fingertips brushing breasts; 
never closer to meet. And it’s me at the window, 
watching both guests dissolve in a squall of hail, 
ticking at the glass its tiny watches, 
making the world out to be cold and intimate – 
alone and alive as a thought 
seeking in a picture to hide. 

Fight Songs

I once had a great girlfriend 
who liked to play an album
of college fight songs while 
we made love in her bedroom.

So, even now, decades later,
whenever I hear On Wisconsin,
or especially Cheer, Cheer
For Old Notre Dame, I still
involuntarily start to swell up,
but not exactly with anything
as stupid as fucking school spirit.

Three Cumshots

***

I. When I Got Religion

She holds my full cockhead
joyful, in her eucharistic mouth,
And I am busy, enraptured
thinking about God.
Oh. My. God.

I struggle to bring my myself
back to the immense reality
of my sacramental arousal,
the beautiful young woman
on her knees, as if in prayer
sucking sucking sucking.

Spiritual Oneness does exist.
I saw It in her pubic folds
revealed, not at all concealed,
as I licked her to orgasm,
there remained a veil of Mystery.

Those same folds, now puffy
with pleasure she touches lightly,
lightly, lightly as I come
as I come, come, come
into her holy God-given mouth,
I hear the All-Compassionate One
laughing and laughing!

***

II. Literature

With semen on her face,
Kim smiles up at me,
wearing thick reading glasses
as if the literature of our erotic
love needs a sharp focal distance.

In fact, there exists no clever sequence
of humorous or romantic combinations,
neither words, phrases, nor paragraphs
with adequate warmth and sincerity
to describe our reality with precision,
not this love, not anyone’s love.

We know this, and try anyway.
On good days literature gets close
enough to make words wet
like ink on thick-textured paper.
Electronic, digital words seem pale,
tell only half the story, ghost-writing,
and we hear none of the music.

***

III. Jacking It for Jesus

I might also say:
Boinking for the Buddha, Muff-Diving for Muhammad,
Taking It In the Ass for Allah, Yanking Kosher for Yahweh.
In India, I don’t know which deities to worship,
so I spurt sacred cream at sunrise, for all of them.

After several million years of human fucking,
we might offer our gods praise most-passionate,
in those moments, those few seconds when
lovers cry, “Oh, God! Oh, God! Oh My God!”
And the lovers really mean it.
Unintentionally giving praise where it is due,
due to the sincere nature of most orgasms,
fucking can often be as worthwhile as prayer.

On the West Side

we sat on a wooden bench by the Hudson River

the ripples of the river glistened from the moonlight

I commented how beautiful her big gold earrings were
said that her name, Tara, meant earth goddess

then her eyes asked me to kiss her 

next we were behind the bushes and under a canopy of trees
pulling down our pants, fumbling onto the park grass

catching twigs in our hair
she said, “I’m going to fuck you white boy”

as a metal lamppost glowed faintly

Bubblegum

I play these same games since I turn eighteen.
The rules evolve in ways I don’t choose.
Each time I say daddy things becomes more extreme.
I find a way to retain innocence to lose. 

I spread my legs for cameras, on stage.
Still I cannot look these men in their eyes.
My birthday does not reflect my mental age. 
They call me on apps to make me cry. 

I hide my pastel knives near my Barbie dolls —
pink walls requested with the reddest of welts. 
I swallow anything that will keep me small. 
I suffocate doubt with a tight leather belt. 

After they cum, I pretend to be numb, 
a hard candy shell over bubblegum. 

Bingo

Always carry Bingo – my imaginary handgun. 
Whenever I do anything bad or wrong or stupid, 
I pull out Bingo, hold his mouth to my temple; pray.
Sometimes Bingo is an actual cocked thumb 
with forefinger extended. Sometimes I shout, “Bang!” 
as thumb snaps, fist recoils. My head often jerks 
to the left when the slug rips into my skull, 
tunnels through brain, lodges in left temporal.
Always shoot myself in the right side of the head. 
I’m right-handed. So is Bingo. Nice thing is, that, 
unlike other guns, nobody else in the world can fire Bingo. 
Bingo can never be taken away from or used against me. 
Nor can Bingo slaughter a roomful of people 
before finally turning on myself.
But I worry about Bingo. 
Especially after dark in bad neighborhoods. 
I’m contemplating buying Bingo a gun. 
For those lonely nights when I’m not around. 
Something could happen.
Imagine if this were not a free country 
and I could not go out and buy Bingo a gun. 
Such thoughts make me more than ever want to 
go out and buy a gun. 
Just in case something happens 
to make me bingo, say, you.   

As I Open My Eyes

The monsoon season persists,
by far and away the longest 
and worst one any of us has ever seen
The roads are nothing but mud,
the only bridge swept away 
in the flooding weeks ago. 
Supplies are dangerously low,
our children are loud and hungry.

We need desperately to harvest
the wild yams that grow abundantly
along the river in the valley
below us, but there are rumors
of rebel snipers, all crack shots, 
all along the treeline. In the morning, 
we’ll draw straws to see who goes, 
so I’m praying I won’t be left 
holding the short one, then handed 
a hoe and a burlap sack.

I pray until my sore knees remind me
I’ve been doing this crap every night 
for months to get this god damn rain
to stop, and now still can’t remember
the last time I even glimpsed the sun.
As I open my eyes and get back on my feet,
I can’t help but wonder if it’s true
that you never ever hear that final shot 
that drops you dead.