Sweets
To cherish cherry kisses, and to pluck
From trembled limb or nest of lips, and suck
On every cheery flesh that nourishes,
Is what every choice lover cherishes.
I was too disciplined when I embraced
My first loves. My pleasures were almost chaste.
I was afraid to reveal my needing
All the joy upon which I was feeding.
But the body’s terrible, if it fails
To cleave to others. Unbearable jails—
Or alarms—of morals imprison us,
Til candied coitus comes to poison us.
I want no sweets labelled—libelled—by threats
And warnings. Cherish sweets one gives and gets.
Après Juvenal
Juvenal quartered Rodos and Malta,
Gibraltar and Morocco: Following,
We’ve toured these redoubts—citadels gods loved,
Lighting on isles of gusts or ports of sun.
We cross salt water, and lightning crosses
Our skies; I cut round corners to corner
Your kisses—as fluid as snow passing
Into rain, quartering all these four lands.
March soaked Rodos and August seared Malta;
December delivered us Gibraltar
And Morocco, snow-cold, though lacking snow.
Rodos cradled solely my solo dreams.
We’ve coupled, on all fours, in but three
Quarters of Juvenal’s “quartet.” Love keeps score.
Heavenly Earthy
Our shadows, quivering, were royally
Happy, as were our illuminated
Physiques, our conflagration of livid
Faces, vivid in the heaving sunlight.
My body was bronze; yours was quite sun-browned,
So altogether lovely, singled out,
Your legs fluttering like each eyelash;
Your two breasts were two cups at which I drank.
Pain should be painstaking to be sweet.
You flinched, at first, to receive my measure,
But turned rampant, Modesty denuded,
As we bucked—two horses—past Repression.
As happily tumultuous as martyrs,
Celestial beings, we came, bestial, to earth.
Horseman
I want to make love as if I have hooves
And horns, and snort my sunny, Maltese joy,
My scot-free bluster, to take you and break
Blissfully the bed, our flanks, quivering.
Delirium, my generous woman,
Is our lot; no flinching. Incoherent
Spasms, a loud Braille, spell our spoiling
Climax, our rime royale, our hard-earned cries.
I must be animal and a poet—
To trot out lines and totter into bed
Or roar out rhymes while romping in our sheets.
You scratch, you bite, but you don’t slap, and I’m grateful:
Your “animal” being bears no animus:
Hear my snorting mouth! Your kisses retort!
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