HAWKED AND DOVES

Love is hawked from every ad,
is sent likes doves from all our arks,
is aimed at every easy mark,
is scribbled on every poet’s pad
Through it all we keep in mind
what we, every one, know is fact:
that what we seek is really Sex

ORDER AND ENGAGEMENTS

I thought love’s inherent anarchy
erodes the institution.
I my co saw the situation starkly,
imposed institution,
and then, to defend love’s covenant,
fortified all my redoubts.

But I abandoned my battlements
and witnessed my army’s rout.
Too late, enlightenment came darkly;
the armistice was troubling:
I learned no lover’s a monarchy,
all lovers are republics.

AMAZING FANTASY #16

To locate her elongated man,

an invisible girl
hoisted her green lantern.

Her archenemy – that scarlet witch! --

countered with a dark spell
hidden in a shadow

that would blind any moon knight’s vision.

But concupiscence stirred
this lightning lad to flash.

Firestorm-sparked, my tinder kindling breached
her lonesome miracle:
I’m now her human torch.

CONQUERING LOVE

With hope my single ideology, innocence my only weapon,

I rose out of the nursery and went to conquer Love.

I passed all the girls in cellophane, said No to the ones in bows.

No purpose found I in frivolity: I was out to conquer Love.

And Love was a Virgin in a Pershing tank, a saint in burnished chain mail.

And I was Bubba in a pickup truck, an Eskimo in underwear.

Still, no purpose found I in frivolity. I was out to conquer Love.



So: I fell on Love with my Weakness, and I fell on Love with my Hope,

Fell on Love with my Purpose – was all-out to conquer Love.

But my belief blunted to memory, and my arms were battered to guile.

I fell back into my hatchery – I was out, oh! conquered by Love.

‘Cause Love’s a Virgin in a Sherman tank, Guan Yin in a steel nuptial veil.

I was a hick in a beat-up truck, an Eskimo exposed to the bare.

Though I found no purpose in frivolity, I was downed, conquered by Love

MY YOUNG SELF:

Your many ghosts haunt these my yellow years,
they still shout because I cannot speak.

The center of your infinity constricts to dimensionlessness. My unstable molecules made me your atomic traitor from the start.

I bartered your generous energy for this my degenerate austerity,
your oratorios and vision for these my parrots and mirrors.
I traded the fire and the wine for diet coke and ash, your altars of sacrifice for a sepulcher and some artifice.

That elusive wholeness I was to complete reduced to incoherent ruins.

Somewhere along the line a promiscuous warrior traded guts with a riskfree prayer
who avoids your fruit for fear of the rot.
Somehow an artful scientist of metaphor
transformed into this jester of awkward gestures.

Perhaps,
in time,
that I I now condemn
may become
the I I understand.