Like entering a room
where a woman waits,
reclining, with coy eyes,
I stumble into awakeness
onto my erection, silent
and patient.

Given time to dress,
it isn’t rumpled or slouched
in its suit of hardness, but relaxed
and full, having taken the morning
to wake up before me.

It doesn’t want me to wake
to cajole it to orgasm
and fall back to sleep,
but to say, Yes, I like
you too. I hold it
in my hand, no longer
surprised or resentful
at its shape, merely content
with its proportion
to my body.

I flex it with a sigh
against my sleepy fingers
and enjoy the quiet morning
with a good friend.

Something
punctures the center
of the surface,
but of what isn’t the surface
for long,

like a ball’s gravity
bending space
in an unseen dimension,
matter leaking towards the intersection,
the point of reference
that allows it all
to be seen through.

Punctuated
by an exclamation point,
a lofty claim,
or a dusty feeling
opened with rusty hinges,

it neither traps
nor sets the trap
but announces
the bait that warns
of what will get you.

It alone
will tell you
to call it out,

for the eye that passes
politely over the guts

will decide to avert
when what began as whole,
now thoroughly chewed,
passes.

Sun curving lightly,
twist
over the glittering
blisterdome, six
mile-high coffeeshops
direct lightning
to where it cannot be reached,
except through

handshakes. I long
for the days before
the menstrual taboo
replaced the world of smells,
somewhere between sulfur
and the aging limburger
our parents smelled for us.

Taking the same feeling,
and without turning it
upsided down,
what once was brevity
is now gravity.

Industrial smoke is best
rendered
in pastel, or wavy lines
of ink that can morph
into hair,
cartoonishly crude,

pocket surrealism,
trombones from the smokestack.

Colliding peach fuselage,
clouds appearing overnight
framing a rainbow,
colored by gases found
deep in the earth,

unexpected openings
and penetrations.

Long before running
my hands through the dog’s
hair,
I know from scent
the oil that will remain
on my fingertips.

Mirrors, converted
from the windows
of retired skyscrapers,
cover thousands of acres
of the earth’s surface,

redirecting energy
made negative
through overuse
back into the atmosphere,

helping our trash bags
stay fresh,
even on sunny days

free of unexpected moisture.

Do it.

Right. Man, that’s Right.

Man, you do it. Forever.

This time. But a moment.

Bookends, bookended. Right.

For once
I. Never mind. Open.

Spaced out under heat lamps.

Faster, faster. Do it. Heat up.

Does this fast car really? Stop?

Drive on. Like an earthquake.

Right on. Like forever. Stop?

In this life we.

I spent all day following a bruise
on a pale bare thigh,

all day, every day,
over hills and down rivers,
at the bottom of the ocean and the center of a star,

beyond the day in the year of our lord,
during innocence and after the modern,
past the sentence through syntax,
onward towards preposition and allegory,
turning left at Form That Implicates Through Structure,

between the chased, the pursuer, the devil and the deep blue sea,
beyond haiku that silenced her with winter bells,
facing the sidewalk that glittered like a burst vessel of stars,

at taco johns with a chorusline of girls that chased me

to push experience through a lonely girl’s bruise
that only comes together on paper.