Body. I worship your body like I am to worship a cataclysm—

with such awe, fear, and zeal that is of everything I truly hold

dear.

And I worship a body of mine too; and I worship the body which is

our body: entwined, absurd, mighty and radiant.

Eyes with which to touch and ears with which to feel, nostrils with which

to hear your plea, and hands with which to see and make you kneel

before the breeding heart that pumps lifeblood across and about

the human branches. Such body I do worship, and I expect

my fellow men and women to worship such endeavours as well:

the honey-dripping sheath of love and the milk that’s fit to spring

and swell. Your riverbed, dried in the morning, seeks the mainmast,

urging my ship to sail upstream—

heavens of cum I shall pour within and over your skin. I shall fetch

crystalline nights in which to hide and come together.

Under a blanket of smooth leather where my hardwood sleep

wakes to reach, my skin and your skin colluding with ashen bosom

in an ample ashen kiss—

those dimples behind your smiling lips, your feral teeth dashing

for a taste, my coarse and bulging ribcage, the locking of our brains

releasing sound waves to eclipse our once distorted vision, first

grasping, then delivering with the utmost precision a pathway

that bids us into better and vibrant sways.

Such body I worship; my children and your children,

I expect them to worship such body as well;

cruel, unyielding, obscene, crushing, impenetrable,

cleaved, pollinating, boiling, glacial,

in bloom.

Then at once my friend, extend your limbs to meet gladly

the body waiting for your vigour. Women who open their

chests and their maternal cradles to the robust flair of your sex

and men who are neither faint nor flaccid but desirous

and frank down their navel.

I hold dear the one who gives herself to me as if she were giving

away the richest fruit from her highest tree: her body is to be bitten,

tasted, immersed in, made to quiver, clenched, and then released

until all creation can mirror and feast on this jolted unison.

And I shall give my fruit and my seed to her as well: wide-smiled,

I am the one worthy of her, for I shall not falter before the archway

of our junction.

Even though it creeps in and even though it strikes, untimely and

unruly, foraging hopes and hunting desires, coveting blood and

trailing each sense out of the dense skin of the forest—

needles and seedlings lumping our throats, muscles spasming,

ferns and dead foliage binding our branches, roots quaking.

It’s in our nature; it runs us deep and grips us in.

My love, do you fear the day our embrace becomes water?

Because I fear the burning other, the barren and dried trade

like a dull and unconcerned handshake, a whiff of perfume

on a shade,

or simply to look into the glass and exclaim, as soon as the deed is over:

nothing more I wanted, and don’t you look upon me with eyes of a lover.

And if this be the case, I shall perfectly steer free from it

On the contrary, I shall welcome the terror and pain to be sipped

from each other’s moist lips, for I fear no change nor desire the chain

of distance; for my seas are tempestuous and boiling, and my kingdom

cannot be known by name; it is a kingdom where two bodies, her body

and the body mine, can dance and surge without fear or shame.

Then let the untamed beasts say: “This human lot has finally claimed

their own pleasure as such.” The body itself, whole, perfect, imperfect

hollow, stuffed, kissing, defecating, masterful!

This enlightened ruler, ruling of its own accord and devoid of anguish,

angst, and defilement. Such body I wish to witness. And I shall indeed

act and behave so that comes the day when even grace be depraved.

A deliverance of souls, the moment bodies awake to their power and

their misery! A deliverance of hearts, the moment bodies sleep until

the very end of their rhythmicity! And myself and the one I hold

dearest, closer, nearest, we shall be ready,

ready to scatter joy and fulfillment from our orifices, water falling

on the prickly, thick-headed zealots of decency.

On that day, you shall witness no more lonely parts from her or from me,

but a gathering of trust such that my fronds and hers shall mingle well together.

To crush; and to be crushed by; the body you hold dearest—

and to labor so that this body shall know all pleasures and the sanctity it has inscribed;

to collect and wreathe its lonelinesses with the most luminous binding;

I anxiously wait for such majesties. I, patient, I join my limbs with limbs I love

and detach and rejoin once more! Save me from faces and arms littered

with restraint and frigidity, but grant me a mind that cherishes his or her

body and its deliciousness—

that is to me the only validity.

(From Poems. 2016-2018)