[1] Among the many ways you torture Me, at night, lying in bed: First that grim sentence of guillotine, Of your eye not meeting my eye, Pretending a wily abstraction of thought, And as I turn around to face the page Of my book, instead of letting an axe Fall on my neck, a single mischievous Droplet of a caress across the nape.

[2] In the morning dark waking Next to you, my first glance Is of you, a Zen cat dressed In a clock of mist, circling your Arms, leveling your long bow, And then that swift swoosh of A green glance torpedoing me To the reef of your body.

[3] As you swamp me with throaty laughter, A rollicking sea crashing over the gunwales, I silt walk my thumb and index finger, A lone desert ship up and down the dunes, Towards your humid belly, that indigo Cave of Swimmers at Gilf Kebir.

[4] Caught in a sudden rainstorm, in the middle Of a run, I huddle under a mimosa, sweat pouring Out my pores, and run the pink flamed brushes Of its fallen flowers across my face, and call your Name to each crash of thunder, a skin bag of water Poured into the coals of this thirst for you.

What is that we use between us, As a sternson? A nutty examination of Antlions, waxwings & monarch butterflies, At midnight – this bar of soft silver We set between the days, where yesterday Is sternpost, and keelson today, to fortify This joint now attaching me to you?

Your ha-ha reaches me across this row Of books I array around my body as A ha-ha; I wake from my reading, wearing Leaves and grass as chausses, and ride Across your body using my hands to dowse For the hidden secret of your gurgling water…

Sunlight today talks using as a hailer This cawing crow, and summer is the dragoman That clambered abroad my sticklighter as it Nosed its way into your bay, where you were Twining lilies into a besom to sweep away The sadness of my years. Asphodels again now…

My thoughts hop, alight and rub Their feet nosily like cicadas tonight. Night air after rain taken on the tongue Tastes like cool white wine poured from The green glassy demijohns of water oaks.

Does their monotonous two-note call reach You there, slipping lightly, between The bars of New York's traffic? Like a doleful dog, Which misses the hand that feeds it, I tempt My life back to this room with a picture Book I was thumbing through, to put off Sleep, on Bella Tuscany…

Here I would have reached over to Poke you, and laugh at your fantasy Of watching Il Positino with someone Named Pinocchio – that name since You like licking noses to show Affection and pleasure…

Noumenon, a word in italics floats out Of the text submerged in drowsiness. I take it, and embroider it to your name; A word, which in my mind too, is A thing that stands in its own light…

After that the line turns to yellow jackets Wrestling, tearing off wings, carrying off heads. I can see your ears perking in attention as You read this. What a strange and strong locus Of love this is, shaped like that tornado funnel Of an antlion, towards whose center all of My thoughts seem to fall…