like everyone

like everyone you cry when you are kissed
  especially in the dark, a tear falling silent from each little eye
down each little cheek
flat on your back, a body
hanging over you
  like everyone does
you think abt love
abt how to kiss without sound
escape
without tears audible
to keep your kissing audience
  in the dark
you definitely don't want a conversation here, now about that
  and you remember the chill of connectionless
  and going in a motion of
no-I-really-do-want-you
just like you think I do want you
  with the windows open & naked
like two kings
  in one kingdom
  trying to share a body
but without that kingdom-brain
without anything for striving
  it's chilly
  & you've got to chill
to flat-on-your-back relax, now
  because kissing is not for minds
  or saving-for-loves only
and loneliness doesn't it save
  you from dying, touchless?
you would cringe for weeks at being touched
  building your fortress
  around your rancid heart
    to keep it all from taking you to war
and like everyone, you try to buzz it away
  with fleets of imagined fire
    and the knowing
  that a body
and a mouth
  can be healthily penetrated
    
     but a brain,
oh
     but that still makes your moats flood out
   and the road is washed away
  so no one can get to us
at all
  anymore

1 may

I was young & spring showed up

I was told that on mayday

tradition says

to leave flowers for a beloved

on their doorstep

to ring the bell, and to hide in wait.

I did this for my best friend-

she knew to look for the flower giver

to find the flower giver

and to kiss the flower giver once she did.

She found me behind the lilacs

and she kissed me.

I got mad

or I got embarrassed

not that she'd kissed me

but because 

she knew it was I who had given them.

I got so mad I made her cry

and she was my best friend in the world

so I cried

too

ohwhell

I kissed five people in the last 19 days
but only one of them came
and one of them is out of the state
and one of them is out of the country
and one of them is desperate every night
and one of them is in "an open relationship"
and one of them I do like I think
but it isn't inevitable
with one I got undressed
with one it was slowmotion
one kissed across a bar
one was sober
one was gay
one was fat
one had beautiful dark eyes
one was tall & ugly
one had the palest thinnest hair
one had the softest beard
one can't grow a beard
one could never look at me
one could barely touch me
two of them made my bed the day after
but none had breakfast with me,
because I had to go to work in the morning

the real really happening

The new day, old songs. Is it easy to tell, now? Until tomorrow. If it has been at least two weeks, and untrustable they are to bring the truths to us. How truthful is enough. How much does one say to make another comfortable. How often does one say it before lying. How likely am I thoughtless of the others. How deep am I swimming in it. How much does he mean it. How real is really happening. 

Gravity, and the slides in my head through the night. I dreamt of charles last night again; it had been years since we've seen one another, and he lived in a bus or a plane where I peed on the carpet, then shrugged it off coffee spilt from the real gray cup from which I absolutely drank throughout the short night... here there was also a tiny espresso machine... and he familiar height & body of years and years and years. I kissed myself upon waking.