My buddy Joe and I, up late or early smoking as we do bowl after bowl, chatting
incoherent philosophy, ranting on the bluntness of flesh,
Fell of course on sex, architect of consciousness, reciting poetic smut because we can no
longer speak in our fathers’ prudish idiom;
Fell on long dead nights suspended in the haphazard murk of memory; on petrified
touches of lips and hands, preserved for reasons known only to skin;
On the inarticulate sorrow of horniness, the vain mechanics of cock and cunt, imperious
mandates of procreation, bellowing forever through synaptic space;
On prizeless conquests, necrophilic love for bags of atoms dispersing ceaselessly into the
vague midnight of entropic time;
On the ineluctable modality of begetting and dying, the spurs to sire and hold, insatiable,
mindless, incessant, guiding us irrevocably to the ever-present hereafter;
On the fervor, the glory, and the mortification; on the rage, the passion, the disconcerting
silence of a softer kiss…

O, countless days, nights, groggy mornings, spent in blind pursuit of cum.
I recollect restaurants, reflections in candlelit dishes and silverware, carefully picked
dresses and pressed shirts,
Frivolous gabs, flirtatious smiles: furtive signs of yearning for ultimate fuck.
I recollect leaving those restaurants, strutting nervous but defiant together through the
city chill, through the glare of red and green traffic-lights alike;
Stealing into the leafy shadows of hidden roads and into rooms, sweet with the faint scent
of perfume, furnished with plush and hanging lamps.
I recollect awkward seconds of uncertainty, leafing through reams of regrets for deeds
done and not yet done.
I recollect the imminent collisions: lips, hair, cheeks, necks, breasts;
Flurries of unzipping and unbuttoning, clumsy and rushed; trails of cloth and denim
swerving blindly into embraces of expectant sheets;
Awaited inclusion; warm velvet folds and dew; pulse of sphincters blossoming; mouths
mouthing the hairy pubic hilt;
Spittle slicking shaft and tit; adoring bustle releasing the salty smack of consummation,
sting of euphoria, reception, then forgetfulness.

I recollect pills before and after, laded rubbers tossed in trash and toilet-holes;
I recollect fruitless spunk scattered on wasting navels, the cryptic of myself ejaculated
into the barren womb of eternity;
And I am left deeply blue, even worse than blue-balled: sterile fixation, cruel law of
climax, permitting me to touch and taste and tremble
And to still know nothing and feel nothing and understand nothing.

For how can I love what I cannot know? With just brief access of flesh, what may I hold
when rosy morning pries us from the mortal bed?

Priests mount their pulpits and press lips to holy blood and wafer, corporal God, crux of
flesh, red lashes glistening, brutal prick of spear and thorn.
Professors talk of grass in a questioning child’s hand, of Bloom and Molly, of those so
saintly motorcyclists, all progenitors of this and many poems.
Collegiate vagrants give me drink and weed, to remind that chemistry controls me; that
physicality is my soul and shall ever be my soul.
But bowls burn out, pages and faiths wither, and all tingles of skin fade into the dull
hangover of organic love, curse of conception, ancient unbearable shame.

But Doug—we’ve got another bowl, said Joe, stopping my sad rambling. It’s ready now.

I would have stayed trapped in the reclusive maze of forever, touching not, nor
being touched, refusing illusions, preferring nothingness;
I would have stayed faithless, absent, shielded by algebra, isolated in geometry,
unknowing in the abundance of my knowledge;
But for that good Joe, scraggily bearded bugger, who with friendly looks returned me to
the breast of earth.
I took the bowl. He observed me with forgiving eyes, two tiny bluish flowers in a
wasteland of skin,
Foreseeing genetic destruction, staring always into the mirror of death, yet blooming still,
petals quivering in the immaculate ecstasy of now.
For now is alive and beautiful—and ever shall be alive and beautiful—and time
Nothing more than an endless string of nows stretching to the last orgasmic shout of the
world.
For whoever has eyes and hands and lips and a tongue, for present and future finite
lovers, for enthralled and disgusted critics alike, for Joe, and most importantly for you, my companion in eternity,
I publish the shout of our communion, triumphant and proud,
Unashamed in what is cum what is love what is hope what is all what is Us.